ANTI-SUFFRAGE 

TEN       GOOD       REASONS 

GRACE  DUFFIELD  GOODWIN 


UC-NRLF 


ANTI-SUFFRAGE: 
TEN    GOOD   REASONS 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/antisuffragetengOOgoodrich 


Anti-Suffrage: 

Ten  Good  Reasons 

BY 

Grace  Duffield  Goodwin 


NEW  YORK 

DUFFIELD  AND  COMPANY 

1912 


,.;;f 


Copyright  1912.  by 
DUFFIELD  &  COMPANY 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


Introduction      •         .         .         .         3 

I     The  Ballot  Not  a  Right  •       IS 

II     Difference  in  Fundamental  As- 
sumptions        .         .         .         .27 

III  Foreign  Conditions  no  Basis  for 

American  Action    .         .         ,37 

IV  Four  Classes  That  Constitute  a 

Menace  ....       43 

V     The  Ballot  and  Industry  .       51 

VI     The  Ballot  and  Vice         .         .       67 

VII     Property  Rights:     The  Loss  of 

Immunities  and  Privileges       .       75 

VIII     Sex  a  Dominant  Factor  .       85 

IX     Sex  Antagonism.         .         .         .97 

X     Conditions  in  Suffrage  States  .      107 

XI     Analysis  of  one  of  the  Suffrage 

Platforms        ....     115 

Conclusion  .         .         .         .     135 


242428 


*  *  The  agitator  must  stand  outside  of 
organizations,  with  no  bread  to  earn^ 
no  candidate  to  elect,  no  party  to  save, 
no  object  but  the  truth— to  tear  a  question 
open  and  riddle  it  with  light ' ' 

—  Wendell  Philups. 


INTRODUCTION 


INTRODUCTION. 


^T^HE  demand  for  any  sweeping  and 
-■"  revolutionary  change  in  existing 
conditions,  whether  political,  indus- 
trial or  religious,  throws  upon  the 
sponsors  of  such  a  change  the  burden 
of  proof.  Present  evils  must  be  clearly 
demonstrated,  and  the  proposed  reme- 
dies must  hold  out  a  reasonable  hope  of 
permanent  betterment.  The  ardent 
supporters  of  the  present  demand  for 
universal  adult  suffrage  (the  exact 
meaning  of  ^ Votes  for  women")  are 
under  the  necessity  of  proving  to 
American  women  their  present  evil 
condition,  and  of  proving,  also,  that 
universal  adult  suffrage  is  the  panacea. 
The  discussion  in  this  book  is  con- 
cerned with  answering  the  arguments 

3 


Anti-Sufifrage 

of  suffragists  who  claim  the  full 
rights  of  citizenship  for  all  women. 
To  fair-minded  critics  many  of  the 
arguments  for  limited  female  suffrage 
are  plausible,  and  in  some  cases  sound, 
such  as  those  which  base  their  demand 
upon  a  limited  suffrage  for  women 
with  educational  and  property  quali- 
fications. It  must  be  remembered  that 
twenty-six  states  in  the  Union  have  to- 
day some  form  of  limited  female  suf- 
frage, which,  however,  is  of  so  little 
interest  to  the  women  concerned  that 
the  voting  right  is  very  rarely  used.  It 
is  estimated  that  less  than  2  per  cent,  of 
the  New  England  women  who  are 
entitled  and  urged  to  vote  upon  school 
matters,  ever  take  advantage  of  their 
opportunity. 

Those  who  oppose  the  universal 
franchise  for  women  submit  to  men 
and  women  interested  in  this  subject, 
that  such  a  Sane  position  as  restricted 

4 


Introduction 

suffrage  is  not  advocated  by  suffragists. 
In  this  day  of  frenzied  democracy, 
limited  suffrage  is  not  popular  with 
men,  much  less  with  women.  Suffra- 
gists desire  full  female  citizenship  with 
all  the  rights  of  men.  It  is  against 
these  wholesale  claims  that  the  anti- 
suffragists  level  their  objections. 

We  who  sincerely  and  seriously  op- 
pose the  program  offered  by  the  suf-  . 
fragists,  unite  in  asking  them  to  prove 
the  evil  condition  of  American  women 
as  a  whole,  and  to  demonstrate  the 
remedial  effect  of  the  ballot  when  / 
granted  to  women.  We  admit  that  in- 
dividuals and  groups  under  existing 
conditions  frequently  endure  injustice; 
women  in  the  industrial  world,  as  a 
group  or  class,  suffer  under  heavy 
wrongs;  individuals  who  own  proper- 
ty and  pay  taxes  with  no  voice  in  pub- 
lic matters  suffer  a  form  of  injustice. 
Suffragists    and    anti-suffragists    alike 

5 


Anti-Suffrage 

are  eager  to  see  these  wrongs  righted, 
but  they  differ  seriously  as  to  the  means 
for  this  end.  Nevertheless,  we  submit 
the  proposition  that  American  women, 
judged  not  by  the  individual,  the  group, 
or  the  class,  but  as  a  whole,  are  suffer- 
ing under  no  wrongs  which  need  for 
their  redress  the  violent  overturning 
of  the  entire  political  machinery  of  the 
nation. 

In  the  following  pages  it  is  intended 
to  present  a  brief  outline  of  the  objec- 
tions of  a  large  and  rapidly  increasing 
number  of  women  to  an  experiment 
fraught  with  so  much  of  danger  to 
the  body  politic,  so  much  of  danger  to 
the  possession  of  the  many  immunities 
and  privileges  granted  to  women  in 
many  of  our  states,  so  much  of  danger 
to  women  themselves. 

We  have  no  desire  to  confuse  the 
issue  by  comparing  our  position  with 
that  of  women  in  other  countries.  Few 
6 


Introduction 

American  women  can  speak  with  intel- 
ligence regarding  matters  so  purely 
local.  We  desire  to  act  as  American 
conditions  demand,  and  we  refuse  to 
be  stampeded  by  the  oratory  of  women 
from  England  or  elsewhere,  who  prove, 
by  daily  misstatement,  that  they  are  not 
informed  concerning  American  con- 
ditions or  American  laws. 

Many  women  of  this  country  are 
accepting  English  statements  of  Amer- 
ican conditions,  and  declaring  them- 
selves to  be  sufifragists  without  intelli- 
gently considering  for  themselves  the 
political  situation,  the  industrial  and 
legal  conditions  now  prevailing  in  their 
own  country. 

The  sufifragists  ask  for  the  ballot 
upon  the  ground  that  they  are  *^hu- 
man  beings."  Anything  so  obvious  is 
outside  the  bounds  of  discussion,  but 
anti-suflfragists  constantly  emphasize 
the  equally  undeniable  fact  of  sex  dif- 

7 


[Anti-Suffrage 

ferentiatton  with  its  many  limitations. 
What  will  do  for  a  man  ^^human  be- 
ing" will  not  necessarily  do  for  a  wo- 
man ^^human  being."  There  is  no 
neuter  gender  in  our  thought.  We 
hold  that  sex  is  a  dominant  factor  in 
this  question  of  duties  and  of  abilities. 
The  suffragists  also  offer  the  argu- 
ment that  this  is  a  ^^race-movement,"  a 
^Vorld-movement,"  from  which  they 
should  not  be  excluded.  The  anti-suf- 
fragists contend  that  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  ask,  in  this  question,  how 
any  world-movement  is  going  to  work 
out  practically,  when  it  comes  to  a 
definite  demonstration  in  the  limited 
area  of  America,  confronted  with  inex- 
orable American  facts.  Theories  are 
much  easier  than  demonstrations,  and 
the  suffragists,  by  their  exalted  senti- 
mentalism,  are  plainly  and  persistently 
disregarding  the  only  things  which 
concern  us  in  laying  out  a  political  pro- 
8 


Introduction 

gram  for  our  own  country,  and  are 
evading  the  only  imperative  issue, 
which  is  ^^How  will  this  program 
affect  this  country  and  the  women  who 
make  half  of  its  population?" 

This  is  not  a  world  question  or  a 
race  question;  it  is  a  question  of  pa- 
triotism. This  is  a  note  seldom  or 
never  sounded  in  this  difference  of 
opinion.  Patriotism  consists  in  finding 
out  what  is  good  for  America  by  intel- 
ligent thought,  and  in  doing  what  is 
good  for  America  by  devoted  service. 
Only  as  patriotism  is  kept  alight  can 
all  the  nations  of  the  world  be  served. 
The  ^^man  without  a  country"  has 
never  been  a  world-force. 

A  large  number  of  women  are  in- 
different and  uninformed,  and  it  is  to 
aid  in  presenting  a  fair  statement  of 
the  anti-suffrage  position  to  such  wo- 
men that  this  hand-book  has  been  pre- 
pared.    Confused  thought  and  uncon- 

9 


[Anti-Suffrage 

sidered  speech  are  the  order  of  the  day. 
It  is  highly  desirable  for  us  all  to  bring 
our  brains  into  the  discussion  of  the 
question,  and  to  subject  our  emotions, 
our  enthusiams,  our  sympathies  to  the 
control  of  our  reasoning  powers.  A 
large  part  of  the  suffrage  movement  at 
'  present,  in  its  fervor  and  fury,  repre- 
sents the  acme  of  hysterical  feminine 
thoughtlessness  and  unrest.  The  re- 
mainder represents  the  impractical 
idealism  of  that  class  of  men  and  wo- 
men whose  ardor  carries  them  lightly 
over  the  many  difficulties  which  are 
insurmountable  for  those  who  will 
be  called  upon  in  the  future  to  apply 
these  roseate  dreams  to  the  common 
tasks  of  practical  politics. 

^^Idealists  have  always  led  the 
world — never  the  average  man  or  wo- 
man," say  the  suffragists.  Truly  have 
they  said;  but  even  idealists  must  have 
followers,   and   idealists  who   can   in- 

10 


Introduction 

spire  the  average  follower  with  a  lofty 
hope  must  have  something  worth 
while  to  present.  Only  a  great  cause 
can  command  a  leader  of  vision  and  a 
discipleship  of  obedience.  The  cause 
of  woman  suffrage,  though  deeply  in- 
teresting, is  not  supremely  urgent,  and 
is  in  no  way  comparable  to  the  libera- 
ting struggles  for  religious  and  poli- 
tical freedom  which  the  world  has 
sometimes  seen.  In  its  application  it  is 
but  a  question  of  method,  a  discussion 
of  ways  and  means — the  best  ways,  the 
most  effective  means,  of  attaining  un- 
defined and  half-understood  political 
ends  in  a  huge  and  ill-balanced  democ- 
racy struggling  under  the  present  bur- 
den of  an  already  dangerously  large 
electorate. 


II' 


THE   BALLOT  NOT  A   RIGHT 


THE  BALLOT  NOT  A  RIGHT. 


TN  early  days,  long  before  the  war, 
^  the  great  question  of  slavery  arous- 
ed the  interest  of  some  few  far-sighted 
American  men  and  women,  and  at  an 
international  abolition  conference  held 
in  London,  such  men  as  William  Lloyd 
Garrison  and  Wendell  Phillips  went 
as  delegates.  With  them  were  ap- 
pointed several  brilliant  women, 
friends  and  counsellors  of  those  men: 
Lucretia  Mott,  Elizabeth  Cady  Stan- 
ton, and  others.  On  reaching  London, 
the  women  were  refused  official  recog- 
nition, which  so  incensed  Garrison  that 
he  arose  and  left  the  hall.  On  the  re- 
turn of  the  party  to  this  country,  there 
was  set  on  foot  the  Woman's  Rights 
movement,    which    for    awhile    swept 

15 


Anti-Suffrage 

the  land  like  wild-fire.  The  women 
rightly  felt  that  they  should  have  been 
allowed  to  vote  upon  this  important 
issue.  The  agitation,  therefore,  had 
its  origin  among  noble  and  brilliant 
people  for  great  moral  ends,  and,  in 
the  passage  of  time,  has  gathered  to  it- 
self gradually  a  younger  group  of  ad- 
herents, who  have  forced  it  far  beyond 
its  original  purpose,  who  have  failed 
to  remark  the  growing  complication 
of  political  problems,  and  who  cannot 
be  made  to  realize  that  today  the  great 
issues  on  which  the  original  demand 
was  based,  have  so  changed  that  what 
was  once  a  question  of  the  best  way  to 
handle  a  moral  issue  has  now  become 
a  question  of  the  best  way  to  handle 
party  politics.  At  the  present  time 
this  question  of  woman  suffrage  is  not 
a  question  of  one  clear-cut  moral  issue, 
not  a  question  of  the  theory  of  gov- 
ernment or  the  philosophy  of  gov- 
i6 


The    Ballot   Not    a    Right 

ernment,  but  simply  and  solely  a  ques- 
tion of  politics.  Given  the  highly 
specialized  profession  of  politics,  the 
^^great  game,"  played  as  it  is  now  in 
this  country,  will  the  entrance  of  wo- 
men into  the  field  make  it  better  or 
worse?  By  doubling  the  electorate, 
and  therefore,  according  to  the  law  of 
averages,  coming  out  with  condition^^ 
very  little  changed,  can  we  hope  to  do 
anything  more  than  make  more  diffi- 
cult an  already  difficult  task? 

^^Educating  by  means  of  the  ballot" 
is  an  experiment  to  be  tried  slowly, 
and  not  by  throwing  into  our  elector- 
ate a  mass  of  indifferent  and  inexperi-| 
enced  voters.  Those  who  steadily  op- 
pose this  experiment  consider  it  far 
too  difficult  and  dangerous  to  be  thrust 
upon  a  nation  which  has  so  recently 
won  its  title  to  be  considered  a  world- 
power.  America  is  a  vigorous  young 
leader   in   the   family  of   nations.      It 

17 


Anti-Suffrage 

should  not  have  its  progress  checked  by 
rash  ventures  which  have  to  do  with 
the  very  foundations  of  its  governmen- 
tal life. 

In  considering  this  question  fairly, 
we  must  understand  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  ^^natural  right"  to  the 
si^  ballot.     Natural   rights   are   rights  to 
^1   life,  property,  etc. ;  the  ballot  is  a  man- 
devised    instrument    for    the    peaceful 
expression  of  the  popular  will  in  gov- 
ernment.    It  is  conferred  as  a  serious 
responsibility  upon  men  who  have  ful- 
filled   certain   well-known    conditions. 
/TVomen  are  made  exempt  from  the  ex- 
ercise   of    political    responsibility    in 
'  view  of  the  duties  toward  home  and 
family  which  they  are  performing  for 
the  benefit  of  the  state.     The  ballot  is 
^     not  a  right  denied;  it  is  a  burden  re- 
moved.    The  ^^mbecile  and  criminal" 
argument   is   nothing   but   cheap    and 
superficial  clap-trap.     Great  confusion 
i8 


The   Ballot   Not   a    Right 

has  existed  on  this  point,  but  there  is 

really  no  reason  at  all  for  anything  but  jf 

an  acknowledgment  of  the  facts.  !        y^  J^ 

The  ballot  being  a  responsibility,  if         y^    j 
we  demand  it  and  receive  it   we  must      .J      ^  J 
be  prepared  to  accept  all  that  it  entails,  0^  T     .) 

and  the  state  must  be  prepared  also  to      J^  ^      }K 
accept    the    difficulties    and    dangers!  ^^     / 
which  will  arise  from  a  sudden  and       ^    c^^ 
great  enlargement  of  the  voting  body.  ^j 

We  have  been  told,  even  by  such 
men  as  the  late  Senator  Hoar,  that  if 
women  receive  the  franchise  they  may 
vote  or  not,  as  they  desire.  This  is  not 
the  original  conception  of  the  duty  of 
a  voter.  Men  are  never  so  taught. 
Everywhere  they  are  urged  to  vote, 
and  the  pulpits  of  the  land  make  the 
casting  of  a  ballot  a  patriotic  and  relig- 
ious duty.  Ex-Governor  Utter  of 
Rhode  Island  (now  Congressman), 
claims  that  one  of  the  greatest  dangers 
will  be  the  enlargement  of  the  indiffer- 

19 


Anti-Suffrage 

ent  class,  the  busy,  middle-class  trades- 
man and  housekeeper.  Men  of  this 
type,  he  says,  are  already  a  great  drag 
on  elections,  and  have  always  to  be 
brought  to  the  polls  by  those  interested 
in  ^^getting  out  the  vote." 

The  ballot  carries  with  it  the  duty 
of  bearing  arms  in  time  of  war,  and  of 
jury  duty  in  times  of  peace.  If  women 
are  granted  the  ballot  the  governmental 
system  will  have  to  be  reconstructed  to 
free  us  from  these  duties,  or  we  shall 
have  to  attend  to  them  while  doing  our 
own  peculiar  and  non-transferable 
tasks.  JVIr.  William  Allen's  frivolous 
arguiiient,  in  his  ^Woman's  Part  in 
Government," — to  the  effect  that  any 
woman  can  bear  arms  who  can  struggle 
with  the  crush  at  the  Brooklyn  bridge, 
is  wide  of  the  mark.  Absence  from 
home  and  children  during  prolonged 
jury  service  will  not  materially  help 
the  state.  Women  are  everywhere  to- 
20 


The    Ballot   Not    a    Right 

day  suffering  from  exhaustion  of  vital 
force,  due  to  the  incessant  demands  of 
a  life  crowded  with  claims  outside  the 
home,  either  in  social  obligations,  phil- 
anthropic or  civic  interests,  or  the  tax- 
ing strain  of  industrial  life.  Between 
these  two  comes  the  large  percentage 
of  American  women,  far  larger  than 
any  other  class,  who  need  all  their 
strength  for  necessary  household  tasks. 
The  watchful  and  intelligent  observer 
fails  to  see  the  surplus  of  strength  to  be 
expended  in  a  man's  way  for  the  good 
of  the  state,  and  he  does  see  the  good 
of  the  state  seriously  menaced  at  its 
source  by  the  inroads  upon  feminine 
vitality  which  will  be  made  when  po- 
litical duties  are  added  to  those  bound 
upon  our  shoulders  first  by  nature,  sec- 
ond by  a  highly  developed  civilization. 
This  applies  not  so  much  to  those  wo- 
men who  would  be  content  merely  to 
vote,    as    to    that    large    class    which 

21 


Anti-Suffrage 

would  inevitably,  in  its  natural  desire 
for  power  and  publicity,  *^enter  poli- 
tics.'' 

The  suffragists  remind  us  that  the 
political  burden  is  not  heavy  for  the 
average  man ;  that  he  spends  very  little 
time  and  energy  in  governing  his  coun- 
try. In  every  community,  however, 
from  village  to  city,  there  are  men  who 
^^handle  the  politics,"  and  who  give  up 
their  lives  to  it,  degrading  themselves 
as  bosses  and  grafters,  or  wearing  them- 
selves out  as  reformers.  The  same 
number  of  women  would  in  all  prob- 
ability do  the  same  things,  because 
every  manhood  class  has  either  a  corre- 
sponding or  a  potentially  corresponding 
womanhood  class,  and  this  proportion 
of  women  is  too  large  to  be  needlessly 
sacrificed. 

The  "woman  in  politics"  is  not  a 
menace  of  the  future.  She  has  appear- 
ed, and  if  she  be  a  type,  it  is  instructive 

22 


The   Ballot   Not   a    Right 

to  look  upon  her  and  see  to  what  more 
politics  will  lead.  Women  in  politics 
are  like  men  in  politics — so  testify 
Judge  Lindsay  and  ex-Governor  Hale, 
both  of  Colorado.  They  are  good,  bad 
and  indifferent,  with  the  added  empha- 
sis of  the  tendency  to  the  extreme  inher- 
ent in  all  women,  so  that  a  woman 
corrupt  in  politics  has  been  shown  to  be 
worse  than  a  man;  a  woman  to  gain 
political  ends  has  been  known  to  offer 
what  is  euphemistically,  but  quite  clear- 
ly described  as  the  ^^new  bribery", — an 
abyss  of  horror  into  which  only  the  low- 
est will  fall,  but  into  which  the  lowest 
will  fall,  as  they  fell  in  the  days  of  the 
Roman  decadence.  We  cannot  afford  , 
to  have  any  woman  so  besmirched. 

In  considering  this  question  it  is 
well  to  observe  all  its  aspects.  The 
opponents  of  suffrage  for  women 
are  deeply  convinced  that  there  are 
elements  of  danger  for  some  women 

23 


Anti-Suffrage 

that  all  women  should  consider,  and 
elements  of  danger  for  the  state  that 
should  be  matter  of  consideration  for 
both  men  and  women,  before  we  com- 
mit this  country,  unique  in  history  and 
in  composition,  to  an  experiment  in 
which  is  undeniable  danger  both  to 
government  and  to  women. 


24 


DIFFERENCE  IN  FUNDAMEN- 
TAL ASSUMPTIONS 


II 


DIFFERENCE  IN  FUNDAMEN- 
TAL ASSUMPTIONS. 


nr^  HE  demand  that  women  be  allow- 
-*•  ed  equal  part  with  men  in  the 
tasks  of  government,  is  based  upon  two 
assumptions:  First,  that  all  women  de- 
sire such  a  share  of  the  political  bur- 
den, or  can  be  induced  to  desire  it,  and 
second,  that  all  conditions  will  be 
greatly  improved  by  granting  suffrage 
to  women.  Were  the  premises  correct, 
the  conclusion  would  be  obvious. 
Without  a  proper  investigation  of 
these  assumptions,  the  conclusion  that 
women  must  be  enfranchised,  and  that 
speedily,  is  made  the  basis  of  a  pro- 
paganda which  is  everywhere  arousing 
the  opposition  of  thoughtful  men  and 
women,  who,  after  a  study  of  the  as- 

27 


Anti-Suffrage 

sumptions,  are  unwilling,  and  intel- 
lectually unable,  to  be  drawn  to  any 
such  conclusion. 

There  are  various  estimates  of  the 
percentage  of  American  women  who 
favor  suffrage  for  women.  Mayor 
Gaynor  of  New  York  says  *4ess  than 
2  per  cent.,"  Dr.  Meyer,  the  bibliogra- 
pher of  the  Library  of  Congress  in 
Washington,  thinks  it  is  less  than  4  per 
cent.,  which  is  the  same  percentage 
given  by  the  women  of  Massachusetts 
in  the  referendum  of  1895.  Two  years 
ago  Miss  Jessie  Ashley,  treasurer  of 
the  National  Suffrage  Association, 
stated  in  the  Woman  s  Journal,  that 
the  National  Association  had  28,000 
dues-paying  members,  and  at  present 
there  are  80,000  in  suffrage  organiza- 
tions. In  February,  191 2,  Miss  Ash- 
ley says  that  a  ^^rough  estimate"  of 
the  American  women  favoring  suffrage 
is  approximately  3,000,000.  Figures 
28 


Fundamental  Assumptions 

for  the  1 910  census  give  very  nearly 
92,000,000  for  the  population  of  con- 
tinental America,  and  estimate  about 
46,000,000  as  females.  Miss  Ashley's 
estimate  and  the  census  figures  prob- 
ably include  many  under  voting  age,  as 
suffrage  has  made  remarkable  strides 
in  this  country  among  very  young  wo- 
men. The  only  way  to  obtain  figures 
as  to  the  numbers  of  women  interested 
in  a  certain  cause  is  to  find  them  by 
means  of  those  women's  clubs  which 
have  joined  the  National  Federation, 
and  to  compute  the  attendance  at  meet- 
ings devoted  to  the  cause.  But  such  a 
claim,  made  by  any  organization,  must 
necessarily  be  subjected  to  revision,  as 
it  cannot  consider  the  large  number  of 
women  unconnected  with  clubs,  and 
the  large  number  of  clubs  which  never 
consent  to  unite  with  a  central  organi- 
zation. As  for  attendance,  it  is  well  to 
remember  that  all  who  go  to  a  meeting 

29 


Anti-Suffrage 

will  not  necessarily  feel  bound  to  sup- 
port its  object. 

Anti-suffragists  ask  that  American 
women  be  considered  as  a  unit,  and  so 
far  as  possible,  the  necessary  reductions 
be  allowed.  It  is  evident,  no  matter 
what  the  basis  of  percentage  computa- 
tion, that  the  suffragists  constitute  but 
a  handful  of  the  entire  number,  only 
75,000  who  are  sufficiently  interested 
in  the  cause  to  pay  the  fee  of  a  dollar 
a  year,  so  that  they  are  called  "con- 
scious suffragists",  the  implication  be- 
ing that  the  rest  of  the  3,000,000  are 
unconscious  suffragists.  The  women 
who  do  not  desire  suffrage  are  asking 
why  so  small  a  number  should  seek  to 
thrust  upon  the  majority  of  those  op- 
posed or  indifferent  or  completely  ig- 
norant of  the  matter,  something  which 
they  do  not  desire.  So  radical  a  politi- 
cal change  should  be  the  result  of  noth- 
30 


Fundamental  Assumptions 

ing  but  a  strong  popular  demand, 
which  in  this  case  is  quite  lacking. 

The  existing  demand,  aggressively 
as  it  is  presented,  is,  nevertheless,  in 
America,  a  demand  which  has  been 
artificially,  stimulated  by  women  from 
other  countries.  Such  enthusiasm,  such 
fervor,  such  excitement  are  contagious, 
and  we  were  not  properly  quarantined 
by  sound  judgment;  therefore  we  are 
suffering  from  a  mild  but  irritating 
form  of  the  international  disorder. 

The  second  assumption,  that  all  con- 
ditions in  the  state  will  be  greatly  bene- 
fited by  the  exercise  of  the  voting  pow- 
er by  women,  must  be  proved  before  it 
can  be  accepted.  The  fact  that  we 
have,  as  yet,  no  sufficient  proof  from 
the  suffrage  states  is  discussed  in  chap- 
ter 9.  The  anti-suffragists  base  their 
conclusion  upon  very  different  assump- 
tions: First,  that  the  majority  of  wo- 
men are  opposed  or  indifferent,  and  if 

31 


Anti-Suffrage 

swept  in  by  misdirected  enthusiasm, 
will  be  a  menace  rather  than  an  aid. 
The  things  which  people  do  not  wish 
to  do,  or  which  they  are  compelled  to 
do,  are  always  badly  done.  Second, 
that  the  state  will  be  harmed  and  not 
helped  by  doubling  its  present  elector- 
ate, and  adding  to  its  present  voting 
I  force  a  large  number  of  unintelligent 
or  careless  voters,  and  a  small  number 
of  thinking  and  competent  women. 
These  women  without  the  ballot  are 
far  more  effective  in  dealing  with  mat- 
ters of  the  public  good  than  if  they 
were  struggling  to  outvote  an  over- 
whelming number  of  those  having  no 
concern  whatever  beyond  their  imme- 
diate convenience  or  interest.  In  moral 
power  the  small  minority  might  be 
equal  to  many  thousands ;  with  the  bal- 
lot each  woman  counts  one,  and  no 
more. 

32 


Fundamental  Assumptions 

These  are  the  opposite  grounds  upon 
which  women  interested  in  this  ques- 
tion are  taking  their  respective  posi- 
tions. They  are  fundamentally  differ- 
ent. We  who  are  actively  opposed  to 
suffrage  are  willing  to  state  as  briefly 
and  clearly  as  possible  our  reasons  for 
the  position  which  we  hold,  and  which 
we  are  forcing  upon  public  attention 
today  by  our  National  Association 
Opposed  to  the  Suffrage  for  Women, 
which,  although  of  very  recent  origin, 
is  growing  with  almost  startling 
rapidity. 


33 


FOREIGN      CONDITIONS     NO 

BASIS  FOR  AMERICAN 

ACTION 


Ill 

FOREIGN      CONDITIONS     NO 

BASIS  FOR  AMERICAN 

ACTION. 


A  POINT  upon  which  women  who 
^  ^  consider  this  matter  find  them- 
selves easily  confused,  is  that  made  by 
the  sufifragists  when  they  bid  us  note 
the  ever-growing  popularity  of  uni- 
versal suffrage  in  other  lands.  Aus- 
tralia, New  Zealand,  Scandinavia, 
Finland,  are  all  thrown  into  the  dis- 
cussion with  a  reckless  disregard  of 
one  very  obvious  truth — a  truth  which 
makes  all  the  rest  of  the  argument  of 
no  avail,  and  that  is  the  simple  fact  that 
this  is  America,  and  that  America  is 
like  no  other  country  on  the  face  of  the 
earth.  It  has  problems  and  dangers 
and  difficulties  peculiarly  its  own,  and 

37 


Anti-Suffrage 

a  political  step  which  might  be  quite 
desirable  for  Australia,  where  they  beg 
for  immigration,  would  be  totally  un- 
suited  to  a  nation  which  receives  from 
Europe  hundreds  of  thousands  of  po- 
tential citizens  every  year,  many  of 
whom  in  five  years  are  integral  parts 
of  our  body  politic.  New  Zealand  has 
no  population,  running  up  into  the  mil- 
lions, enslaved  and  enfranchised  in  the 
same  generation.  A  canton  of  Swit- 
zerland has  a  somewhat  different  prob- 
lem from  that  which  faces  Rhode  Is- 
land, with  its  64  per  cent,  either  for- 
eign-born or  the  children  of  foreign- 
ers; or  Georgia,  with  its  black  inhabi- 
tants outnumbering  the  whites  in  the 
ratio  of  nine  to  one.  The  problems  of 
England  are  entirely  her  own,  and  she 
is  struggling  for  the  right  to  do  her 
own  deciding,  while  threatened  on  one 
hand  with  a  widespread  and  danger- 
ous  industrial    disturbance,    and   har- 

38 


Foreign   Conditions 

assed  on  the  other  by  the  insistent  de- 
mands for  the  parliamentary  suffrage 
on  the  part  of  stone-throwing,  riotous, 
spectacular  women,  who  incite  one  an- 
other to  every  frenzy  of  hysterical  law- 
lessness. The  women  of  England  be- 
gan by  asking  for  better  property 
rights,  and  better  divorce  laws.  Now 
they  do  not  know  just  what  their  griev- 
ances are;  all  they  know  is  that  they 
want  ^^Votes  for  Women." 

In  America,  many  states  have  just 
property  laws  for  women,  many  have 
such  legislation  pending,  and  in  no 
state  in  America  do  women  need  to 
throw  stones  or  fire  pistols  to  secure 
fair  treatment. 

The  uniform  divorce  law,  which 
would  solve  so  many  of  our  prob- 
lems and  prevent  so  much  wrong 
and  injustice,  is  making  but  slow  prog- 
ress, owing,  among  other  causes,  to  the 
determined    opposition    of    the    very 

39 


Anti-Suffrage 

women  who  have  most  to  gain  from  its 
general  enactment. 

In  no  foreign  country  do  conditions 
parallel  our  own.  We  have  a  large 
and  unwieldy  democracy,  as  yet  scarce- 
ly beyond  the  experimental  stage,  a 
democracy  whose  success  is  not  yet  that 
assured  and  splendid  vindication  of 
our  initial  policy  which  it  will  un- 
doubtedly become  if  we  give  it  time, 
and  refuse  to  entangle  it  with  further 
difficulties.  Once  for  all,  women  who 
are  opposed  to  the  suffrage  extension 
decline  to  be  stampeded  by  the  use  of 
arguments  which  in  no  way  apply  to 
the  political  conditions  in  our  own 
country. 


40 


FOUR  CLASSES  THAT 
CONSTITUTE  A  MENACE 


IV 

FOUR  CLASSES  THAT 
CONSTITUTE  A  MENACE. 


'1X7' E  are  a  nation  of  unsolved  prob- 
^^  lems.  Brains  and  time  and  pa- 
tience are  going  into  their  solution. 
Our  negro  and  our  alien  problem  are 
ours  alone.  No  other  nation  shows  a 
condition  in  which  these  two  difficul- 
ties exist  side  by  side,  and  press  for 
solution  at  the  same  time.  At  present 
no  one  is  bold  enough  to  say  that  we 
are  finding  it  easy  to  amalgamate  the 
sorrowful  legacy  of  our  own  greed  and 
inhumanity,  in  the  race  of  struggling 
children  just  *^up  from  slavery,"  con- 
fused and  bewildered  even  yet  by  the 
sufferings  of  the  past,  the  burden  of  the 
present,  the  blind  ambitions  of  the  fu- 
ture. Our  American  negroes  are  not  yet 

43 


Anti-Suffrage 

woven  into  the  fabric  of  our  common 
life;  their  ignorance,  their  helpless- 
ness, has  not  yet  ceased  to  be  a  political 
menace.  In  the  Southern  states,  where 
white  control  is  held  only  by  the 
frankest  bribery,  where  the  negroes 
number  five  to  one  or  ten  to  one,  as  the 
case  may  be,  it  is  proposed  to  add,  for 
further  exploitation  and  bribery,  all 
the  negro  women,  who  are  more  help- 
less and  ignorant  than  the  men.  This 
is  said  with  full  realization  of  the  num- 
bers of  negro  men  and  women  who  are 
far  beyond  the  average  of  their  people. 
One  has  but  to  see  the  race  close  at 
hand  to  recognize  its  sterling  virtues 
and  its  dangerous  weaknesses,  virtues 
of  sympathy,  patience,  cheerfulness, 
loyalty — weaknesses  of  moral  fibre  and 
of  mental  grasp. 
2^^  We  have  the  problem  of  the  ivimi- 

grant,  coming  here  by  millions  in  the 
last    decade,    coming    from    different 

44 


Classes  That  Menace 

political  conditions,  new  to  republican- 
ism, new  to  responsibility,  new  to  free- 
dom, which,  in  the  exuberance  of  the 
second  generation,  he  misreads  ^4i- 
cense."  He  clings  to  his  own,  and  he 
makes  in  all  our  cities  a  Ghetto,  or  a 
Little  Italy,  or  such  a  settlement  as  that 
of  50,000  Bohemians  in  New  York,  set- 
tlements which  are  not  American  in 
any  particular.  He  populates  the 
streets  of  the  New  England  mill  towns, 
until  in  Rhode  Island  one  may  walk 
perhaps  two  or  three  blocks  without 
hearing  a  word  of  English.  In  five 
years  he  is  a  citizen;  in  five  years  he  is 
expected,  with  the  pressure  of  a  ter- 
rible toil  upon  him,  to  learn  the  lan- 
guage, the  customs,  the  ideals  of  his  fu- 
ture home,  and  to  become  a  unit  in  its 
government.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
majority  toil  incessantly,  learn  very 
little,  are  exploited  by  the  boss  of  the 
ward,  know  little  and  care  less  about 

45 


Anti-Suffrage 

the  government  of  their  adopted  coun- 
try. What  we  are  doing  to  make  him 
worthy  of  citizenship  is  but  a  drop  in 
the  bucket  compared  to  his  numbers 
and  his  need.  We  must  put  time  and 
brains  upon  the  problem  of  the  foreign 
man  as  a  voter.  How  will  it  help  to 
add  the  foreign  woman?  All  workers 
among  these  people  recognize  how 
much  more  backward  is  the  foreign 
woman  than  the  foreign  man.  Many 
of  the  women  live  years  in  this  coun- 
try without  even  learning  the  language. 
This  is  not  true  of  the  younger  genera- 
tion which  tends  to  irreligion  and  law- 
lessness. The  reaction  does  not  set  in 
until  the  third  generation,  as  those  well 
know  who  have  lived  and  worked 
among  them.  The  older  and  the 
younger  foreign  women,  for  very  dif- 
ferent reasons,  would  add  greatly  to 
the  danger  of  the  naturalized  foreign 
vote,  and  as  we  are  constantly  receiv- 

46 


-:;  Classes  That  Menace 

ing  them,  and  as  the  quality  is  steadily 
deteriorating,  we  shall  have  this  to 
consider  for  many  years  to  come.  The 
suf3fragist  proposes  to  double  these  two 
problems. 

We  have,  in  common  with  all  coun-  ^ 
tries,  the  problem  of  the  vicious  wo-  ^ 
man,  numbered  in  our  cities  by  the 
thousands.  The  suffragists  tell  us  that 
they  will  not  vote;  that  they  will  not 
register  because  they  do  not  desire  pub- 
licity. They  are  already  registered  in 
the  lists  kept  by  the  police  in  many 
cities;  they  are  not  classed  as  criminal, 
only  as  potentially  so;  they  would  not 
shrink  from  registration,  and  the  men 
who  exploit  them  would  see  that  they 
voted.  To  a  woman  of  this  class  I  said, 
not  long  ago,  ^^Do  you  want  to  vote?" 
^Tes,"  she  replied.  ^Why?"  I  asked. 
'^What  would  you  do  with  the  ballot?" 
*^God!"  she  breathed,  raising  tragic 
47 


a 


Anti-Suffrage 

arms  above  her  head,  "I'd  sell  it  and 
take  a  vacation!" 

Another  problem  in  all  countries  is 
that  of  the  intelligent,  conscienceless 
woman.  She  exists,  and  she  is  the  com- 
panion of  the  intelligent,  conscienceless 
man  who  plays  politics  "for  what 
there  is  in  it,"  here  in  America  as  per- 
haps nowhere  else  in  the  world  to  the 
same  extent; — the  man  who  makes  the 
public  shame  of  Philadelphia  or  Pitts- 
burgh, or  Denver,  or  San  Francisco  or 
Adams  County,  Ohio, — the  shame  of 
every  American  city  and  town  that 
owns  the  rule  of  the  boss  and  the  ring, 
that  has  political  axes  to  grind  and  po- 
litical trades  to  make. 

Over  against  these  four  classes  of  un- 
desirable voters  among  women  would 
be  the  comparatively  small  number  of 
earnest,  intelligent  women  capable  of 
handling  public  affairs.  They  would 
be  overwhelmed  by  numbers. 

•  48 


THE  BALLOT  AND  INDUSTRY 


y 

THE  BALLOT  AND  INDUSTRY 


TX7HEN  the  suffragists  carry  the 
^^  working-girl  a  handbill  which 
reads  ^^Demand  Votes  for  Women  and 
have  your  wages  raised",  they  are 
rightly  to  be  charged  with  dangerous 
misrepresentation.  The  idea  which  the 
workers  receive,  and  which  they  have 
expressed  when  questioned,  is  that  they 
themselves,  could  they  vote  at  all, 
could  vote  themselves  shorter  hours 
and  higher  wages.  No  pains  are  taken 
by  the  suflfragist  to  explain  to  these  girls 
the  difficult  and  circuitous  route  which 
must  be  gone  over  ere  the  man  for 
whom  they  vote  can  secure  a  voice  in 
legislation  which  will  react  upon  the 
markets  of  the  world,  and  by  increas- 
ing or  diminishing  demand,  will  raise 

51 


Anti-Suffrage 

or  lower  wages,  provided  that  all  the 
heads  of  one  industry  can  be  induced  to 
see  the  wage  matter  in  the  same  light 
at  the  same  time.  There  are  many 
^4fs"  between  the  ballot  and  a  general 
raised-wage  standard. 

A  truism  which  the  suffragists 
calmly  disregard  is  that  wages  de- 
pend upon  economic  law;  if  there 
is  no  market  for  the  goods,  pro- 
duction must  be  curtailed,  and  wages 
will  be  lowered;  if  there  is  a  market, 
there  may  be  good  wages  and  over- 
time work.  If  many  wish  the  same 
kind  of  employment,  and  there  is  sharp 
labor  competition,  wages  will  fall;  if 
few,  wages  will  rise.  If  cotton  is  in- 
fested with  boll-weevil  and  therefore 
high-priced,  wages  shrink,  because  the 
manufacturer  cannot  afford  to  lose  at 
both  ends  of  the  scale.  There  are  a 
thousand  conditions  governing  the 
thousand  and  one  manufacturing  inter- 
im 


The  Ballot  and  Industry 

ests,  or  any  other  employment  interest, 
which  make  the  wage  question  one 
which  can  never  have  a  hard  and  fast 
decision. 

Massachusetts  is  making  an  experi- 
ment of  great  interest  with  the  mini- 
mum wage,  already  a  law  in  England 
passed  by  men  only,  because  an  investi- 
gation touching  nearly  14,000  working 
women  revealed  that  approximately 
half  of  those  employed  in  candy  facto- 
ries and  laundries  received  less  than 
five  dollars  a  week.  The  grave  danger 
is  that  the  enforcement  of  such  a  law 
will  act  by  pulling  down  the  higher 
wage  standard,  reducing  the  pay  of  the 
efficient  worker,  while  it  raises  the  wage 
standard  of  others,  many  of  whom  are 
in  the  inefficient  class.  Proportionate 
wage-raising  in  any  but  large  business- 
es, would  probably  be  impossible.  It 
may  be  that  some  will  not  live  so  well, 
in  order  that  others  may  live  better,  and 

53 


Anti-Suffrage 

the  burden,  which  it  is  desired  to  put 
on  the  shoulders  of  the  employer,  will 
probably  be  slipped  off,  as  usually  hap- 
pens, upon  the  shoulders  of  the  work- 
ers themselves.  This  will  be  a  shift; 
it  is  not  certain  that  it  will  be  a  solu- 
tion. Should  it  happen  that  the  wages 
of  skilled  workers,  deservedly  high,  are 
lowered  in  order  that  the  wages  of  the 
unskilled  may  be  raised,  where  will  be 
the  justice  to  the  high-grade  worker? 
These  edged  tools  have  an  uncomfort- 
able habit  of  cutting  both  ways.  In  the 
majority  of  cases  the  labor  unions 
could  protect  their  men,  but  it  would 
be  at  the  cost  of  the  employer's  entire 
independence.  These  labor  unions, 
with  all  their  mistakes,  and  the  glar- 
ing faults  of  many  of  their  leaders, 
have  come,  and  come  to  stay.  In  wo- 
men's trades,  however,  with  which  both 
suffrage  and  anti-suffrage  women  are 
concerned,   the  unions   find   organiza- 

54 


The  Ballot  and  Industry 

tion  extremely  difficult.  Many  of  the 
workers  can  neither  speak  the  lan- 
guage nor  grasp  the  idea  presented. 

Only  one-fifth  of  our  American  wo- 
men are  in  ^^gainful  occupations";  32 
per  cent,  of  these  are  under  twenty-one. 
45  per  cent,  cease  to  be  wage  earners 
at  twenty-five.  They  do  not  intend 
to  make  a  life-work  of  their  busi- 
ness, and  therefore  the  element  of 
impermanency  enters.  The  girls  ex- 
pect to  marry  and  have  homes.  As  they 
do  this,  an  endless  procession  of  the 
unskilled  and  uninterested  passes  be- 
fore the  employer's  eyes.  He  is  con- 
stantly training  new  and  ignorant  work- 
ers. The  men  are  permanent,  and  they 
are  paid  for  their  permanency  and 
their  increasing  skill.  This  is  true  of 
New  England  textile  mills,  and  offers 
a  fair  standard  for  a  general  statement. 

The  question  of  equal  pay  for  men 
and  women,  to  be  secured  by  the  bal- 

55 


Anti-Suffrage 

lot,  now  enters.  Men  and  women  do 
not  receive  the  "same  pay  for  the  same 
work,"  because  every  employer  knows 
that  they  seldom  do  the  same  work. 
Women's  work  is  prejudiced  by  this 
unskilled  procession  of  impermanents. 
Witness  the  changes  made  by  the  abo- 
lition of  women  from  the  offices  of  five 
great  railroad  systems.  Women  teach- 
ers in  New  York  have  won  their  fight 
to  secure  the  same  pay  as  men,  but  the 
salaries  allotted  to  men  were  reduced 
from  $900  to  $750,  and  the  salaries  of 
women  raised  from  $600  to  $750.  The 
sufferers  were  men,  many  of  whom  had 
families  to  support.  Men  and 
women  have  been  counted  the  coun- 
try over  as  so  many  units,  so  many 
women  teachers  against  so  many  men 
teachers,  wages  so-and-so.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  by  far  the  greater  burden  of 
responsibility  rests  upon  the  men,  as 
they  fill  the  larger  number  of  import- 

56 


The  Ballot  and  Indusf^M 

ant  positions,  leaving  to  women  the 
lower  grade  work.  When  they  are  not 
doing  the  same  work;  why  should  they 
receive  the  same  pay?  When,  as  in 
Chicago,  a  woman  is  Superintendent  of 
Schools,  and  does  her  work  as  well  as 
a  man,  or  better  than  he,  she  should  be 
paid  in  proportion,  and  examination 
will  show  that  she  is.  It  is  work  that 
should  count,  its  amount  and  quality, 
not  its  sex-stamp.  In  Utah,  with  the 
vote,  teachers  receive  less  than  in  New 
York  without  it.* 

In  the  New  York  shirt-waist  strike 
in  i909-'io,  a  noted  suffragist  told  the 
strikers  that  the  strike  would  have  been 
unnecessary  had  they  had  the  ballot. 
Miss  Minnie  Bronson,  special  agent  at 
that  time  for  the  Bureau  of  Commerce 
and    Labor   of   Washington,    tells    us 

♦Discussion  of  teachers*  wages  in  "The  Wage 
Earning  Woman  and  the  State,"  1912,  by  Minnie 
Bronson,  twice  special  agent  of  the  Federal  Bureau 
of  Labor. 

57 


Anti-Suffrage 

these  facts :  40  per  cent,  of  the  strikers 
were  men ;  60  per  cent,  of  the  remain- 
der were  under  twenty-one,  and  25  per 
cent,  of  all  the  women  of  voting  age 
had  not  been  long  enough  in  this  coun- 
try to  acquire  a  residence.  How  would 
the  possession  of  the  ballot  have  helped 
this  situation?  These  women,  under 
their  grievous  wrongs,  do  not  need  to 
be  hustled  into  the  voting  Dody,  where 
they  will  not  know  enough  to  help  in- 
telligently. They  need  the  protection 
of  laws  made  by  an  electorate  as  free 
as  possible  from  corrupt  and  ignorant 
voters,  an  electorate  with  sense  enough 
to  elect  men  who  understand  the  work- 
ings of  economic  laws  in  relation  to 
labor  conditions,  if  we  are  to  hold  to 
the  American  tradition  of  ^Wepresenta- 
five  government."  This  may  be  slow 
progress,  and  provoke  the  impatience 
of  many,  but  it  will  be  far  surer  prog- 
ress than  to  endeavor  to  get  a  hopeless- 

58 


The  Ballot  and  Industry 

ly  cumbersome  electorate  to  strive  for 
an  unassimilated  mass  of  new  legisla- 
tion which  refuses  to  take  cognizance 
of  other  conditions  which  must  neces- 
sarily enter,  and  change  or  modify  con- 
ditions. The  fact  is,  that  the  more 
progressive  states  in  the  Union,  which 
as  yet  are  states  of  manhood  suffrage 
only,  are  rapidly  enacting  legislation 
for  the  protection  of  women  and  chil- 
dren. All  of  these  laws  are  ^^man- 
made";  therefore,  as  some  suffragists 
have  said,  they  ^^would  not  live  under 
them."  Law,  man  or  woman-made,  is 
as  impersonal  as  religion.  Neither 
bears  the  imprint  of  sex,  and  if  a  law 
be  good  it  matters  not  at  all  who  made 
it.    The  aim  is  good  law.  I 

These  increasingly  good  laws  have 
been  greatly  aided  by  the  influence  of 
women  appearing  before  legislatures 
and  committees,  v/ithout  the  ballot,  to 
urge  impersonal  ends.     Their  motives 

59 


Anti-Sufifrage 

could  not  be  impugned.  The  suffrage 
states  are  behind  in  the  enactment  of 
labor  legislation  affecting  women  and 
children,  although  Colorado  now  has 
good  child-labor  laws.  Thirty-one 
states  now  limit  the  hours  of  labor. 
Colorado  has  an  8-hour  law  for 
women  but  no  week-hour  law,  and 
no  law  prohibiting  night  work;  there- 
fore it  is  of  little  real  value.*  Thir- 
ty-nine states  compel  seats,  one  suffrage 
state  does  not;  sixteen  states,  all  non- 
suffrage,  prohibit  night  work.  In  two 
years,  between  iqoS-'io,  54  laws  were 
enacted  by  legislatures  of  32  states  for 
women  and  children,  and  these  were  all 
non-suffrage  states.  Miss  Bronson  says 
^^There  are  more  and  better  laws  for 
the  protection  of  women  wage-earners 
in  the  non-suffrage  states  than  in  states 
where  women  have  the  ballot.    Posses- 

*"The    Wage    Earning    Woman    and    the    State" 
(1912),  by  Minnie  Bronson. 

60 


The  Ballot  and  Industry 

sing  the  ballot,  the  woman  who  works 
must  stand  on  an  equality  with  men, 
and  ask  no  favors ;  must  accept  the  con- 
ditions imposed  upon  her  by  the  law 
of  supply  and  demand,  and  give  as 
much  toil  as  he,  although  no  increase 
in  physical  vitality  will  respond  to  this 
demand."  This  is  not  equality  of  the 
sexes;  it  is  ^^speeding  up"  the  woman  to 
the  breaking  point  to  make  her  reach 
man's  physical  level.  Were  he  reduced 
to  hers,  the  work  of  the  World  would 
be  seriously  handicapped. 

Women  in  industry  must  be  taken 
care  of,  for  the  sake  of  the  fu- 
ture of  the  nation.  The  way  to 
^take  care  of  them  is  not  to  give  them 
something  which,  while  it  makes  them 
politically  equal  to  men,  puts  them 
where  they  cannot  ask  for  special  privi- 
leges or  special  legislation,  without 
owning  their  physical  and  industrial  in- 
feriority. They  are  in  no  way  inferior 
6i 


Anti-Suffrage 

to  men;  they  are  simply  different  from 
men,  and  because  of  this  difference, 
must  work  under  better  and  more  com- 
fortable conditions.  When  industrial 
favors  are  granted,  they  must  be  grant- 
ed to  women ;  when  any  one  is  saved  in 
this  cruel  industrial  conflict,  it  must  be 
women.  The  children  of  the  next  gen- 
eration furnish  the  unanswerable  rea- 
son. The  world  is  only  now  awaking 
to  the  dangers  of  industrial  life  for  wo- 
men and  their  children  that  shall  be. 
It  has  not  had  time  to  grasp  the  situa- 
tion. The  rapidity  with  which  every 
great  country  is  now  working  in  this 
field,  proves  that  it  will  be  fairer  to 
give  men  a  chance  to  solve  this  prob- 
lem and  to  offer  to  women  all  the  safety 
in  their  power,  before  the  nerve  of  their 
endeavor  is  cut  by  the  precipitate  en- 
trance into  the  situation  of  many  wo- 
men who  will  so  complicate  matters  as 
to  compel  the  men  to  turn  from  the 
62 


The  Ballot  and  Industry 

solving  of  this  difficulty  to  give  all 
their  time  to  the  general  re-adjustment 
which  will  be  imperatively  demanded. 
Voting  will  not  help  a  woman  to  do 
as  much  work  as  a  man,  as  hard  work  as 
a  man,  or  to  receive  the  same  wages  as 
a  man.  Employers,  in  all  justice,  ought 
to  pay  for  results,  and  not  because  they 
are  compelled  by  law  to  pay  the  same 
price  for  differing  grades  of  work.  The 
complex  civilization  that  has  forced 
women  into  industry  is  endeavoring  to 
protect  her  in  it,  but  the  whole  prob- 
lem is  new,  and  individual  wrongs  are 
so  apparent  that  unthinking  women 
would  rush  the  inevitably  false  situa- 
tion by  saying,  ^^Give  us  the  vote;  we 
will  vote  shorter  hours;  we  will  vote 
equal  pay":  in  effect,  we  will  by  our 
votes  give  women  a  harder  time  than 
they  are  having  now;  we  will  repudi- 
ate privilege  with  one  breath  and  de- 
mand  it  with   the   next,   and  by  our 

63 


Anti-Suffrage 

equality  we  will  stamp  inequality  in- 
effaceably  upon  the  industrial  world. 
^That  is  where  it  should  be  stamped," 
say  the  anti-suffragists.  In  the  very 
nature  of  the  case  the  conditions  of  in- 
dustrial life  bear  hardest  upon  women. 
They  are  the  potential  mothers;  they 
must  have  special  privileges,  and,  wo 
repeat,  they  must  be  specially  guarded 
or  the  men-and-women-to-be  will  be 
born  mortgaged  to  disease,  deformity 
and  defeat.  But  what  becomes  of 
equality?  It  vanishes,  with  other  false 
assumptions. 


64 


THE  BALLOT  AND  VICE 


VI 
THE  BALLOT  AND  VICE 


'T^HE  suffragists  claim  that  the  bal- 
^  lot  in  the  hands  of  women  will 
cleanse  our  national  life  from  the  dread 
evils  of  intemperance  and  prostitution. 
If  this  were  so,  there  would  not  be 
an  anti-suffragist  in  America.  The 
women  who  live  by  the  social  evil 
would  thrust  it  out  if  they  dared 
to  face  the  simple  question  of  star- 
vation. Just  as  the  claim  that  votes 
will  raise  wages  betrayed  confused 
thinking  in  the  matter  of  politics 
and  industry,  so  this  claim  betrays 
confused  thinking  in  the  matter  of  poli- 
tics and  ethics.  Public  sentiment, 
the  result  of  an  aroused  public  con- 
science, goes  before  the  law  and  fol- 
lows after  it.    No  law  can  be  made  or 

67 


Anti-Suffrage 

enforced  without  such  sentiment.  The 
terrible  weaknesses  of  human  nature 
stand  in  the  way  of  prohibition,  and 
abolition  of  the  social  evil. 

These  dread  things  still  exist  in  suf- 
frage states,  and  several  of  these  have 
had  from  sixteen  to  forty-two  years  for 
experiment  and  proof.  Our  only  sure 
knowledge  of  what  can  be  done  must 
be  based  upon  what  has  been  done,  and 
if  it  cannot  be  done  in  small  and 
sparsely  settled  communities, — and  we 
must  do  women  the  justice  to  suppose 
that  they  are  unable,  and  not  indiffer- 
ent or  unwilling, — how  shall  it  be  ac- 
complished in  regions  with  close  popu- 
lation and  congested  cities,  where  these 
evils  are  the  strongest? 

The  non-suffrage  states  are  making 
a  strong  fight  in  many  cases  on  both  of 
these  questions,  and  the  church  and  the 
medical  profession  are  being  called  to 
aid.  Miss  Jane  Addams  of  Chicago, 
68 


The  Ballot  and  Vice 

insisting  that  fear  be  used  as  a  motive 
since  higher  appeals  have  failed,  has 
offered  the  most  sensible  advice  that 
has  been  given  regarding  the  social 
evil.  In  effect,  she  proposes,  for  its 
solution,  to  take  it  out  of  the 
ethical  realm,  where  it  belongs,  but 
where  apparently  it  can  never  be 
fought  out,  and  hand  it  over  to  the 
boards  of  health.  This  sensible  advice 
will  never  be  followed,  because  of  the 
many  people  in  this  country  who  are 
too  much  concerned  with  theoretical 
good  and  evil  and  their  ideal  treatment, 
to  be  willing  to  take  up  a  difficult  prob- 
lem by  the  first  available  handle. 

The  country  is  thoroughly  awake  to 
the  evils  of  the  white  slave  traffic,  laws 
relating  to  it  are  being  made  and  en- 
forced, and  vice  commissions  every- 
where are  laying  bare  the  conditions 
which  each  city  and  state  must  solve 
according  to  its  own  light.    The  prob- 

69 


Anti-Suflfrage 

lem  of  the  unwilling  victim  is  differ- 
ent from  the  problem  of  the  willing 
participant.  We  speak  always,  on  many 
of  these  matters,  as  if  federal  action 
were  a  possibility.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  action  on  all  these  questions  de- 
pends upon  the  states  themselves.  Let 
the  suffrage  states  lead  the  way.  Let 
them  give  us  a  practical  demonstration 
of  communities  which  have  cleansed 
themselves  by  the  votes  of  women.  Let 
them  prove  their  contention  by  abolish- 
ing in  Utah,  Idaho,  Wyoming,  Wash- 
ington, Colorado,  and  California  these 
terrifying  evils. 

Let  them  begin  their  fight  for  purity 
by  unmasking  whatever  impurity  in  the 
guise  of  religion  still  lingers  in  that 
long-suffering  state  where  the  viola- 
tion of  the  old  principle  of  separate 
Church  and  State  has  so  long  been  a  dis- 
grace to  our  American  ideals  and  tra- 
ditions^ let  them  continue  it  in  those 
70 


The  Ballot  and  Vic? 

other  states  where  the  Mormon  Church 
holds  the  balance  of  political  power. 
Let  them  free  women  under  the  slav- 
ery of  priestly  control,  which  is  none 
the  less  to  be  feared  because  religious 
women  yield  to  it  willingly.  For  many 
years  Mormonism  has  been  branded  as 
a  direct  menace  to  American  institu- 
tions, to  marriage  and  the  family  as 
Americans  understand  these  things. 
Hundreds  of  thousands  of  women  peti- 
tioned against  the  seating  of  Senator 
Reed  Smoot.  Mormonism  was  on  trial, 
and  the  unsavory  testimony  is  on  record 
in  Washington.  In  the  face  of  these 
facts  we  ask,  where  is  woman's  power- 
ful political  influence,  secured  to  her 
by  the  ballot,  apparent  in  the  purifica- 
tion of  those  states  in  which  she  is  the 
equal  of  man  in  affairs  of  state? 


71' 


PROPERTY  RIGHTS:  THE  LOSS 

OF  IMMUNITIES  AND 

PRIVILEGES. 


VII 

PROPERTY  RIGHTS :  THE  LOSS 

OF  IMMUNITIES  AND 

PRIVILEGES 


1X7 E  are  told  that  women  need  the 
^^  ballot  to  secure  their  property 
rights;  to  protect  their  wages  or  their 
incomes;  to  enable  them  to  share  the 
guardianship  of  their  children;  to  per- 
mit them  to  engage  in  gainful  occupa- 
tions and  conduct  independent  busi- 
nesses. We  are  told  this  chiefly  by  Eng- 
lish suffragists,  who  are  so  touchingly 
unaware  of  our  laws  that  they  conceive 
us  to  be  living  under  intolerable  tyr- 
anny. Because  they  suffer  injustice 
they  take  it  for  granted  that  we  do,  also, 
and  it  is  quite  time  for  us  to  understand 
and  to  state  those  laws  which  make  the 
majority   of   American   women    quite 

75 


Anti-Suffrage 

content  with  their  lot  in  this  respect. 

All  American  law  is  based  upon 
what  is  known  as  the  English  Common 
Law,  an  inheritance  from  the  time 
when  rough  justice  kept  partial  pace 
with  rough  conditions;  when  it  was 
considered  a  great  step  ahead  to  put  a 
woman  and  all  her  belongings  under 
the  control  of  some  one  man,  her  hus- 
band or  her  nearest  of  kin,  in  order  that 
she  might  not  be  freely  despoiled  or 
divested  of  her  property  at  the  will  of 
some  one  whom  she  was  physically  un- 
able to  resist.  The  Common  Law  came 
with  our  fathers  to  America,  and  grad- 
ually, with  changing  conditions,  has 
been  changed  and  enlarged  until  today 
very  few  of  the  old  provisions  remain 
in  any  of  the  states.  Some  states  have 
made  many  changes,  some  few;  but  all 
are  yielding  gradually  to  the  pressure 
of  the  times.  The  provisions  which 
once  protected  a  woman,   and  which 

76 


Property   Rights 

were  meant  for  her  good^  and  not  for 
her  harm,  read  today  like  the  gravest 
injustice,  and  women  who  neither  read 
nor  think  are  grasping  at  the  surface 
words,  and  failing  to  recognize  the 
original  meaning,  and  the  rapidity  with 
which  the  new  demands  are  stamping 
themselves  upon  the  legislation  of  to- 
day. 

The  laws  of  Massachusetts  are  so 
favorable  to  women  that  one  is  tempted 
to  drop  a  sympathetic  tear  for  the  op- 
pressions of  the  Massachusetts  man. 
The  volume  called  ^Woman  under  the 
Law  of  Massachusetts,''  by  Henry 
Sprague,  offers  instructive  reading. 
Upon  these  Massachusetts  laws  were 
framed  many  of  the  woman's-property- 
right  laws  of  Ohio  and  of  Maine, 
while  New  York  and  Pennsylvania 
as  well  as  other  states  have  many  of 
the  Massachusetts  provisions.  In 
many    of    the    New    England    states 


Anti-Suffrage 

the  old  rights  of  ^^curtesy  and  dow- 
""^^  er,"  still  obtain,  the  dower  right 
protecting  a  woman,  the  right  of  ^^cur- 
tesy"  a  man.  It  is  a  fallacious  argu- 
ment for  anti-suffragists  to  note  that 
these  rights  do  not  obtain  in  suffrage 
states,  for  the  reason  that  they  have 
been  replaced  by  other  laws  providing 
for  the  rights  of  both  man  and  woman 
on  an  equal  basis.  All  states  are  strug- 
gling to  bring  the  laws  relating  to  the 
property  rights  of  women  up  to  the 
standard  of  present-day  conditions,  but 
the  impatience  of  the  suffrage  agitators 
will  neither  admit  this  nor  give  time 
for  its  rational  accomplishment.  A  law 
is  not  made  as  quickly  and  easily  as  a 
loaf  of  bread  or  a  baby's  dress.  In  this 
matter  the  non-suffrage  states  are  far 
in  the  lead  because  they  do  not  compel 
women  to  a  legal  equality  with  men; 
many  of  them  offer  ^^mmunities  and 
privileges"  which  assume  frankly  that 

78 


Property   Rights 

the  woman  is  the  weaker,  and  needs  her 
material  afifairs  looked  after  with  care 
and  generosity.  She  will,  of  course,  be 
willing  to  surrender  these  many  privi- 
leges and  take  her  place  as  man's  finan- 
cial equal  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  if  she 
is  given  the  ballot,  but  it  will  bear  very 
heavily  upon  her  for  all  that! 

Here  are  a  few  of  the  provisions  of 
the  Massachusetts  law,  in  which  wo- 
men are  freed  from  certain  ^^disabil- ' 
ities,"  poll-tax,  military  and  jury  duty,   • 
etc.,  and  are  granted  certain  "immuni- 
ties and  privileges." 

The  volume  previously  referred  to 
gives  a  complete  list. 

A  woman  is  not  "legally  of  age  at 
eighteen"  as  is  always  supposed,  but  at 
marriage,  and  a  married  woman  of  any 
age  may  sign  a  deed  or  make  a  will. 

She  holds  her  property  free,  pro- 
vided she  keeps  it  separate, 
79 


Anti-Suffrage 

Her  clothing  and  her  ornaments  are 
secured  to  her  from  the  demands  of 
creditors. 

Life  insurance  money  cannot  be  tak- 
en from  her  for  debt. 

A  woman  may  engage  in  business 
and  make  contracts  apart  from  her  hus- 
band; she  may  be  a  ^^sole  trader"  under 
the  act  of  that  name. 

Husband  and  wife  cannot  make 
valid  gifts  to  each  other  in  default  of 
creditors,  but  a  wife  may  receive  up  to 
$2,000  without  liability,  while  her  hus- 
band may  not. 

Homestead  rights  are  all  in  favor  of 
women. 

A  woman  may  hold  her  property  as 
a  single  woman  if  her  husband  is  in 
prison,  or  if  she  is  separated  from  him 
for  good  cause.     He  may  not  do  this. 

A  woman  is  under  no  legal  obliga- 
tion to  provide  for  her  family,  no  mat- 
ter how  large  her  income ;  her  husband 
80 


Property   Rights 

is  bound  to  the  support  of  the  wife, 
their  children,  his  step-children,  if  in 
any  way  he  has  ever  treated  them  as  a 
parent,  no  matter  how  little  he  may 
have. 

The  wife  may  use  her  husband's 
credit  to  its  limit  for  ^^necessities,"  and 
the  court  will  take  her  unsupported 
word  as  to  what  constitutes  a  ^'neces- 
sity"  for  her.  He  has  no  such  privi- 
lege. 

The  law  compels  a  husband  to  sup-  "^ 
ply  his  wife  with  money  to  maintain  a 
suit  against  him. 

If  she  engages  in  illegal  business  the 
law  holds  him  responsible,  and  not  her. 

If  she  commits  a  ^'minor  crime"  and 
he  is  anywhere  about,  he  is  the  one  to 
blame,  and  Mr.  Sprague  adds,  ''recent 
statutes  enlarging  the  rights  and  privi- 
leges of  married  women  have  not  re- 
lieved the  husband  from  his  responsi- 
8i 


Anti-Suffrage 

bility  for  his  wife's  criminal  and  illegal 
actions." 

Parents  are  equal  guardians  of  chil- 
dren, and  a  woman's  wages  are  en- 
tirely her  own,  free  from  taxation. 

In  these  cases  men  and  women  are 
not  ^'equal  before  the  law,"  as  suffra- 
gists desire  to  become,  but  women  are 
specially  favored.  We  now  note  this 
interesting  fact.  The  women  who  are 
asking  for  the  ballot  are  the  ones  who 
are  saying  that  these  laws  shall  not  be 
changed  in  any  particular,  but  that 
backward  states  should  enact  similar 
legislation.  The  idea,  translated  into 
the  vernacular,  seems  to  be,  ^Ve  want 
to  have  our  cake  and  eat  it,  too.  We 
want  a  man's  rights  and  a  woman's 
privileges." 


8a 


SEX  A  DOMINANT  FACTOR 


VIII 
SEX  A  DOMINANT  FACTOR 


npHE  work  of  the  world,  slowly 
being  differentiated  through  the 
centuries,  has  always  shown,  in  its 
general  division,  this  "rough  justice" 
of  which  we  have  spoken.  Only  among. ^ 
prirnitive  people  did  women  do  the  y 
work  which  we  now  designate  as  "man's  \\ 
work,"  or  share  with  him  such  labors 
as  belonged  to  his  clime  and  age,  a 
condition  of  things  scarcely  compar- 
able to  a  highly  civilized  people  in  a 
highly  complex  social  system.  But 
women  are  now  asking  to  go  back  to 
the  old  standards;  to  fight  if  necessary; 
to  render  judgments ;  to  make  laws,  and 
they  suggest  that  it  is  no  more  their 
business  than  it  is  that  of  a  man  to  care 
for   the  children.     They   have   made 

85 


[Anti-Suffrage 

long  scientific  excursions  to  cite  in- 
stances of  sole  paternal  responsibility 
for  offspring  in  the  lower  orders  of  na- 
ture. And  yet  the  fact  remains  that 
sex  is  the  dominant  factor  in  this  prob- 
lem. Until  the  end  of  all  things  men 
and  women  are  going  to  be  fathers  and 
mothers,  and  by  declaring,  with  one  of 
the  suffrage  leaders,  that  * Vif ehood  and 
motherhood  are  incidental  relations," 
the  women  who  are  carried  away  by 
this  bit  of  insanity  are  hastening  that 
^^end  of  all  things"  to  quite  a  noticeable 
degree.  Colleges  have  occasionally 
declared  marriage  to  be  a  lamentable 
end  to  a  woman's  "career,"  a  sad  fall- 
ing off  from  the  *^higher  life."  Talk- 
ing will  not  change  matters,  nor  argu- 
ment eradicate  the  fact  that  as  long  as 
the  race  has  a  mother,  that  mother  will 
have  to  be  a  woman,  and  if  a  woman  is 
not  a  mother  she  has  failed,  either  vol- 
untarilv  or  involuntarily,  to  do  the  only 
86 


Sex  a  Dominant  Factor 

thing  for  which,  in  the  original  scheme 
of  creation,  she  was  intended. 

Therefore,  the  assuming  of  political 
duties,  as  many  women  must  assume 
them  in  the  event  of  a  granted  fran- 
chise to  all  adults  properly  qualified, 
must  be  not  substitutional,  but  addi- 
tional. We  cannot  wholly,  nor  even  in 
large  measure,  evade  our  own  duties 
and  responsibilities,  and  to  these  we 
must  add  the  burdens  and  duties  of 
men.  There  is  nothing  of  a  woman's 
natural  duty  which  a  man  can  do  as 
well  as  a  woman,  yet,  with  amusing 
arrogance,  women  claim  that  they  will 
be  able  easily  to  do  the  work  in  which 
for  centuries  men  have  been  specially 
trained, — to  do  this  work  as  well  as  he, 
or  better  than  he,  and  to  do  their  own 
at  the  same  time. 

Let  us  just  state  frankly  a  few  things 
which  every  woman  knows.  During 
all  the  forceful  period  of  a  woman's 

87 


Anti-Suffrage 

life  she  labors  under  distinct  disabili- 
ties on  account  of  her  sex;  it  trips  her 
up  at  every  turn;  many  women  are  in 
a  constant  state  of  rebellion  because 
they  absolutely  must  take  ^some  sort  of 
care  of  themselves  or  be  invalided  out 
of  the  race.  In  the  carrying  out  of 
political  plans,  in  attending  political 
conventions,  in  doing  jury  duty,  a  wo- 
man will  be  at  the  mercy  of  her  nature. 
For  one  whole  year,  if  a  new  life  is  to 
emerge,  she  is  unfit  to  assume  addition- 
al risk  in  the  overstrain  of  her  normally 
taxed  nervous  system.  Maternity  is  an 
exhibition  of  a  woman's  nervous  sys- 
tem taxed  to  a  normal  limit,  and  nor- 
mally entirely  equal  to  the  strain.  But 
while  pregnancy  is  not  a  pathological 
condition,  it  is  the  limit  of  nerve-tax. 
Presumably  there  are  other  children 
and  a  home.  How  much  more  ought 
a  woman  to  do?  And  for  every  wo- 
man married  or  single,  during  the 
88 


Sex  a  Dominant  Factor 

greater  part  of  her  life,  there  is  the 
plain  and  unchangeable  fact  that  she 
lives  in  a  periodic  nervous  cycle,  when 
the  life-forces  are  normal,  below  nor- 
mal, and  again  normal,  and  that  during 
the  below-noi*mal  period  she  is  again 
very  nearly  at  the  nervous  limit.  Why 
pretend  that  these  things  are  negli- 
gible? Every  woman  knows  they  are 
not,  but  she  fears  the  derision  of  other 
women  if  she  admits  it.  Where,  then, 
is  her  surplus  strength,  where  the  ex- 
tra force  to  be  expended  in  political 
excitements  ? 

Every  student  of  industrial  condi- 
tions, every  one  who  tries  to  wrestle 
with  the  new  science  of  eugenics,  recog- 
nizes that  the  danger  to  the  working 
girl  which  transcends  all  other  dan- 
gers, is  the  danger  to  her  motherhood, 
and  that  the  paramount  danger  to  the 
state  in  her  industrial  life  is  the  loss  of 
so   many  potential   mothers;   for   the 

89 


[Anti-Suffrage 

great  wheels  eat  up  the  nerve-forces  of 
a  woman's  life ;  the  standing,  the  tread- 
ing, are  perilous  Tocher  feminine  pow- 
ers. The  state  should  save  the  work- 
ing women  and  the  little  children  for 
purely  selfish  motives,  if  for  no  higher. 
It  is  ridiculous  extravagance  to  let  pri- 
vate greed  exploit  the  head-waters  of 
the  stream  of  the  nation.  We  con- 
serve Niagara,  and  throw  away  young 
American  girlhood.  As  a  nation  we 
appear  to  have  no  sense  of  proportion. 
But  to  save  one  part  of  our  woman- 
hood it  is  not  necessary  to  sacrifice  an- 
other. Earnest  men  and  intelligent, 
non-partisan  women  who  plead  with- 
out the  possibility  of  a  suspected  dis- 
honoring motive,  are  awake  to  the  situ- 
ation, and  will  solve  the  difficulty  if  not 
handicapped  by  having  the  ballot 
thrust  upon  all  women  who,  with  it, 
cannot  accomplish  the  purely  moral 
90 


Sex  a  Dominant  Factor 

and   humanitarian    results   which   can 
be  secured  without  it. 

Francis  Parkman  recognizes  and 
states  another  phase  of  the  sex-danger: 
^Without  a  radical  change  in  human 
nature,"  he  says,  "of  which  the  world 
has  never  given  the  faintest  sign,  wo- 
men cannot  be  equally  emancipated 
[with  men].  It  is  not  a  question  of 
custom  or  habit  or  public  opinion,  but 
of  an  all-pervading  force,  always  for- 
midable in  the  vast  number  of  men  in 
whom  it  is  not  controlled  by  higher 
forces." 

There  is  also  a  temperamental  differ-"^ 
ence  in  men  and  women  which  makes 
an  equal  footing  in  political  life  all 
but  impossible.  Whatever  she  may 
have  had  in  the  past,  whatever  she  may 
be  going  to  have  in  the  future,  at  the 
present  moment  she  has  great  temper- 
amental disabilities. 
9^ 


Anti-Suffrage 

The  average  woman  has  as  much 
brains  as  the  average  man,  and  aver- 
age persons  are  going  to  do  the  greater 
paft  of  the  voting,  but  the  v/oman  lacks 
endurance  in  things  mental;  her  forti- 
tudes are  physical  and  spiritual.  She 
lacks  nervous  stability.  The  suffragists 
who  dismay  England  are  nerve-sick 
women. 

Woman  is  possessed  of  that  peculiar 
trait  which  Havelock  Ellis  in  his  vol- 
ume entitled,  ^^Man  and  Woman,"  calls 
^^affectability."  A  wonmn!5_sympathies 
are  quickei^more  easily  roused,  more 
dominant  than  a  man's;  she  is  sensitive 
and  emotional  m  a  way  thTt  differs  from 
his  way,  and  a's  a^:w:oman's  aff^ctabil- 
ity  is  her  great^nnrre  cd-^RPr^m^th  in  her 
own  place  in  thejmrrld^n  it  will  be  her 
greatest  danger  and_greatest  source  of 
weakness  in  golitkal  life.  Not  all  wo- 
men will  enter  political  life;  we  have 
92 


Sex  a  Dominant  Factor 

already  recognized  and  stated  that 
several  times  in  this  argument,  but  we 
propose  to  discuss  the  question  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  many  who  are 
longing  and  intending  to  do  this  as 
speedily  as  they  may.  Dr.  Reibmayr, 
the  German  biologist,  claim5_that  this 
life  of_fee]jng_is  the  great  source  of 
world-strength.,as-k-emanatcs  from  wo- 
man, butjthaJL-it-can  be -checked  and 
killed.  How,  then,  will  this  contribute 
to  the  good  of  the  state?  If,  however, 
"wifehood  and  motherhood  are  inci- 
dental relations,"  and  if  "the  highest 
good  of  the  individual  "  is  the  only  end 
and  aim  to  be  sought,  as  a  suffrage  au- 
thority tells  us,  the  suffragists  may 
carry  their  conclusions  to  the  point  of 
inaugurating  government  by  feminine 
fiat, 
vj  We  w^ho  oppose  this  thing  consider 
the  relationships  of  wife  and  mother 
93 


Anti-Suffrage 

as  of  supreme  importance,  and  the 
highest  good  of  the-indiwjnal  some- 
thing  to  be_auhordinated  to  the  highest 
goodLoLthfiJ^hole. 


94 


SEX  ANTAGONISM. 


IX 
SEX  ANTAGONISM. 


'Tp  HE  two  great  points  on  which  the 
-■"  world  differs  are  politics  and  reli- 
gion. As  yet  these  have  not  entered  the 
home,  and  men  and  women  seldom 
quarel  over  religion,  because  the  men 
are  contented  to  leave  decisions  regard- 
ing religious  affairs  to  their  wives.  The 
wives  in  return  have  been  willing  to 
leave  politics  to  their  husbands,  and 
two  fruitful  grounds  for  difference 
have  been  avoided  in  domestic  life. 
When  women  enter  politics  actively,  as 
many  will  and  must  if  woman  suffrage 
is  to  make  any  impression  upon  politi- 
cal life,  another  source  of  discord  will 
speedily  appear.  Mrs.  Sarah  Piatt 
Decker  of  Colorado,  a  strong  and  able 
suffrage  leader,  recommends  a  ^Wo- 
97 


Anti-Suffrage 

man's  Party."  Women  are  not  to  enter 
politics  as  impersonal  units,  voting  the 
tickets  of  existing  parties,  but  chaos  is 
invited  in  the  form  of  another  party  dis- 
tinguished by  sex  alone — Woman  ver- 
sus Man.  They  seem  to  have  over- 
looked  the  ^^human  being"  conten- 
tions. It  is  no  more  conceivable 
that  all  women,  just  because  they  are 
women,  could  be  induced  to  think  and 
vote  alike,  than  that  all  men  could,  and 
if  they  could  be  so  induced,  they  would 
be  unworthy  of  power.  It  would  argue 
them  unthinking  sheep. 

The  common  suffrage  expressions  of 
^^tyrant  man^"  and  ^^oppressed. woman," 
are  calculated  to  arouse  antagonism 
toward  men  in_the  breasts  of  women, 
who,  unable  to  understand  the  causes 
of  their  individual  or  their  group 
wrongs,  would  solve  the  question  by 
making  man  responsible;  man, — a 
vague  and  terrifying  spectre,  who  is 

98 


Sex   Antagonism 

conceived  as  being  invariably  inimical 
to  v^oman;  who  makes  laws  to  injure 
her,  to  exploit  her,  to  deprive  her  of 
her  rights.  ^^Man-made  laws^^  are 
aimed  at  the  subjugatioiLiiL^vomen ;  the 
existence_of__olji^f^^got4enr-statutes  of 
the  outwiimXommon  Law  of  England 
in  some  of  our  more  backward  states, 
argues  that  they  are  kept  there  by  men 
with  malevolent  intent.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  they  remain  because  men  have  not 
yet  been  everywhere  aroused  to  the  ne- 
cessity for  their  change,  and  advance 
legislation,  which  changes  or  casts 
these  aside,  is  proceeding  with  great 
rapidity.  They  remain  through  indif- 
ference and  ignorance,  scarcely  through 
tyranny  and  malevolence. 

American  women  are  better  treated 
than  any  women  under  the  sun,  class 
for  class,  comparing  our  great  country 
with  others  of  the  same  rank,  and  it  is 
idle  to  argue  when  the  countries  are 

99 


Anti-Suffrage 

not  comparable.  The  women  of  New 
Zealand  may  be  better  treated  than  the 
women  of  the  East  Side  of  New  York, 
but  not  better  than  American  women 
as  a  whole.  The  slurs,  the  innuendoes, 
the  savage  denunciations  which  a  few 
American  women  have  seen  fit  to  heap 
upon  the  heads  of  all  American  men, 
are  cause  for  regret  and  shame  to  the 
majority  who  recognize  that  the  Amer- 
ican man  in  his  desire  and  effort  to 
il\  protect  the  women  of  his  country,  is 
f    ahead  of  any  man  in  the  world. 

All  questions  of  social  and  industrial 
betterment  are  being  eagerly  discussed 
by  men,  and  especial  attention  is  being 
given  to  the  condition  of  the  American 
working  woman  and  her  child.  They 
are  comparatively  recent  factors  in  the 
industrial  problem,  and  because  mat- 
ters can  not  be  adjusted  in  their  many 
bearings  in  a  very  brief  time,  women, 
characteristically    impulsive    and    im- 

lOO 


Sex   Antagonism 

patient,  are  claiming  that  the  Ameri- 
can man  does  not  care,  and  that  he  will 
not  help.  A  mere  sense  of  justice  and 
fair  play  should  operate  to  restrain 
such  silly  and  superficial  judgments.  If 
men  are  able,  by  the  exercise  of  law- 
making power,  to  adjust  all  industrial 
difficulties,  why  did  the  Lawrence, 
Mass.,  strikers  and  employers  come  to 
Washington  to  present  their  grievances 
to  Congress? 

The  anti-suffragists  desire  to  give 
men  time  to  cope  with  these  huge,  new, 
interdependent  problems;  to  endeavor 
to  understand  their  difficulties;  to  state 
no  hasty  and  unconsidered  conclusions, 
to  utter  no  rash  judgments,  and  to  see 
to  it  that  justice  is  done  in  presenting 
these  matters  to  large  groups  of  women 
unable  to  investigate  for  themselves.  ■ 
Let  us  take  two  typical  questions  which 
will  show  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
hasty,  good-natured,  ^^blanket"  legisla- 

lOI 


Anti-Suffrage 

tion.  I.  How  can  short  working  hours 
and  steady  employment  be  secured, 
with  justice  to  the  employer,  in  seasonal 
trades?  2.  How  far  is  it  justifiable  to 
forbid  a  certain  amount  of  child  labor 
in  the  face  of  facts  presented  by  Dr. 
Karl  Pearson  of  the  Galton  Laboratory 
j'pf  National  Eugenics  in  London,  who 
gives  statistics  to  prove  that  the  restric- 
tive child  labor  laws  in  England  have 
■  always  been  followed  by  a  diminishing 
birth-rate?  We  are  well  aware  that  the 
poor  man  everywhere  considers  his 
child  an  asset;  here  in  America  a  man 
will  speak  of  his  big  family,  and  add 
with  pride  that  they  ^*all  have  their 
working  papers."  If  the  child  is 
not  an  asset  it  is  a  liability,  and 
a  very  few  such  liabilities  will  suffice 
for  a  man  earning  six  dollars  a  week  in 
a  Massachusetts  woollen  mill.  Men 
who  legislate  must  face  the  difficulties 
that  arise  between  these  two  aspects  of 
102 


Sex  Antagonism 

the  case.  Shall  we  have  child  labor 
with  its  terrible  and  far-reaching  con- 
sequences, or  shall  we  further  imperil 
a  birth-rate  already  seriously  menaced? 
Snap  judgments  on  such  complicated 
questions  avail  but  little.  The  facts 
have  a  persistent  way  of  getting  under 
foot  to  be  noticed.  The  anti-suffragists 
stand  solidly  opposed  to  child  labor  in 
any  form,  but  they  wish  to  be  just 
to  the  present  lawmakers  and  their  dif- 
ficulties. 

^Sex  antagonism  is  an  easy  flame 
to  fan;  the  feelings  of  men  and  wo- 
men toward  each  other  are  always 
made  hotter  by  that  deep  incompre- 
hension which  lies  at  the  base  of  all 
dealings  between  the  sexes.  Sex  leaps 
unexpectedly  into  all  relations  between 
men  and  women,  intrudes  itself  into 
the  conversation,  the  attitude  of  mind; 
proves  the  basic  attraction  and  the  fun- 
damental source  of  difference.  It  can 
103 


'Anti-Suffrage 

no  more  be  disregarded  than  the  oper- 
ation of  any  other  natural  law  can  be 
set  aside.  To  ignore  it  is  not  to  eradi- 
cate it.  When  sex  enters,  it  is  easy  as 
the  New  York  East  Side  children  say, 
"to  throw  a  hate,"  and  to  make  bitter- 
ness and  anger  where  harmony  should 
exist.  The  entrance  of  woman  into 
politics  will  not  break  up  all  homes  by 
any  means,  but  it  will  assuredly  offer 
one  more  cause  of  sex  antagonism. 


104 


CONDITIONS     IN     SUFFRAGE 
STATES 


X 


CONDITIONS     IN     SUFFRAGE 
STATES 


TlyTANY  of  the  conditions  existing  in 
suffrage  states  have  been  touched 
upon  in  a  previous  chapter.  A  few 
points  are  here  noted. 

The  suffrage  states  are  the  experi- 
ment stations  in  which  we  are  justified 
in  looking  for  proof  of  the  good  accom- 
plished by  the  votes  of  women.  These 
states  are  Colorado,  Utah,  Idaho,  Wy- 
oming, Washington  and  California. 
In  Colorado,  women  have  voted  for 
nineteen  years;  Utah,  sixteen;  Idaho, 
sixteen;  Wyoming,  forty-two.  The 
other  two  have  not  had  so  much  time, 
and  so  need  not  be  counted. 

Night  work  for  women  is  not  pro- 
hibited in  Colorado,  Idaho,  Utah, 
107 


-%: 


Anti-Suffrage 

Wyoming,  and  this  fact  renders  inef- 
fective any  8-hour  law  such  as  has  been 
passed  in  Colorado,  which  applies  only 
to  women  in  ^^standing  occupations." 
An  8-hour  law  to  be  effective  must  be 
reinforced  by  two  other  laws,  one  regu- 
lating night  work,  and  one  specifying  a 
legitimate  week-hour  limit.  There  is 
no  time  limit  set  to  women's  work  in 
Idaho,  Utah,  Wyoming,  unless  such 
legislation  has  been  enacted  too  late  to 
be  included  in  the  last  legislative 
index. 

Former  Governor  Hale  of  Denver 
says,  *^women  average  about  the  same 
as  men  on  all  questions — a  little  better 
on  questions  involving  morals."  But 
"a  little  better,"  and  ''about  the  same" 
are  insufficient  reasons  for  the  greatly 
increased  expense  and  the  added  cum- 
bersomeness  of  a  doubled  electorate. 
Dr.  Helen  L.  Sumner,  a  suffragist,  in 
her  book  entitled  ''Equal  Suffrage," 
io8 


Suffrage   States 

an  investigation  of  conditions  in  Colo- 
rado in  1909,  proves  no  more.  Mrs. 
F.  W.  Goddard  of  Colorado,  President 
of  the  Society  of  Colonial  Dames,  says : 

I  have  voted  since  1893.     I  have  been  a  dele- 
gate  to   the   city   and    State   conventions,    and    a 
member  of  the  Republican  State  Committee  from 
my  county.     I  have  been  a  deputy  sheriff  and  a 
watcher  at  the  polls.     For  twenty-three  years  I 
have  been  in  the  midst  of  the  woman  suffrage 
movement  in  Colorado.     For  years  I  believed  in 
vv'oman  suffrage   and   have  worked   day   in   and 
day  out  for  it.    I  now  see  my  mistake  and  would 
abolish  it  tomorrow  if  I  could. 
p^'^No  law  has  been  put  on  the  statute  book  of 
I   Colorado  for  the  benefit  of  women  and  children 
I  that  has  been  put  there  by  the  women.     The 
I  child  labor  law  went  through  independently  of 
\  the  women's  vote.     The  hours  of  working-wo- 
*  men    have    not    been    shortened ;    the    wages    of 
school-teachers  have  not  been  raised;  the  type  of 
men  that  got  into  office  has  not  improved  a  bit. 
Frankly,  the  experiment  is  a  failure.     It  has 
I  done  Colorado  no  good.     It  has  done  woman  no 
I  good.     The  best  thing  for  both  would  be  if  to- 
l^orrow  the  ballot  for  women  could  be  abolished. 
Mrs.  Francis  W.  Goddard, 
President  of  the  Colonial  Dames  of  Colorado. 
December,  1910. 

109 


Anti-Suffrage 

Judge  Lindsay,  a  strong  suffragist, 
says,  ^Vomen  are  as  much  bound  by 
political  expediency  as  men."  Dr. 
Helen  Sumner  says,  ^^a  woman  rarely 
either  nominates  or  seconds  the  nomina- 
tion of  a  man  except  in  some  cases 
where  the  man  has  shown  himself  un- 
usually favorable  to  women  in  politics." 

In  Utah,  Idaho  and  Wyoming,  with 
Colorado  not  far  behind,  the  Mormons 
hold  the  balance  of  political  power, 
with  women  their  most  ardent  propa- 
gandists and  supporters,  even  to  the 
point  of  defending  polygamy,  and  in 
this  case  the  grave  menace  is  the  en- 
tangling of  a  church  with  state  affairs. 
This  country  has  always  stood  for  the 
principle  known  as  the  ^^separation  of 
Church  and  State."  The  great  addi- 
tional force  of  women  voters  in  these 
states  are  with  the  political  majority, 
who  are  not  only  un-American  regard- 
no 


Suffrage  States 

ing  our  governmental  ideals,  but  anti- 
American. 

As  for  the  question  of  child  labor,  we 
see  that  Wyoming  and  Utah  prohibit 
the  working  of  children  in  the  mines 
only,  although  other  equally  sparsely 
settled  non-suffrage  states,  without  fac- 
tories and  mills,  have  made  child-labor 
laws  to  cover  any  condition  which  may 
arise  in  the  future.  In  suffrage  states 
no  documentary  proof  of  a  child's  age 
is  required. 

The  large  increase_iDf~divafce  is  es- 
pecially noticeable  in  suffrage  states,  in- 
creasing in  Colorado  from  450  to  557 
in  ten  years;  in  Wyoming,  70-143; 
Utah,  225-387;  Idaho,  139-320.  These 
conditions  are  not  charged  against  the 
women  of  the  states,  but  they  exist,  and 
women  would  undoubtedly  rectify  them 
if  they  were  able.  If  the  ballot  does 
not  make  them  able,  what  does  it 
amount  to? 

nil 


Anti-Suffrage 

The  facts  as  to  the  social  evil  in  Den- 
ver are  vouched  for  by  Mrs.  Kate  Wal- 
ler Barrett,  national  president  of  the 
Florence  Crittenden  Homes  for  Way- 
ward Girls.  There  is  a  home  of  this 
organization  in  nearly  every  large  city 
in  the  land,  and  Mrs.  Barrett  says,  ^*In 
all  the  seventy-eight  Florence  Critten- 
den Homes  in  the  United  States  I  never 
saw  such  a  collection  of  girls  of  the  bet- 
ter class  as  are  in  the  Denver  Home." 

Wages  in  Colorado  have  not  been 
raised  since  women  were  given  the  vot- 
ing power.  In  fact,  the  most  careful 
observer  cannot  find  any  betterment  of 
conditions  commensurate  with  the  over- 
turning of  political  affairs,  the  in- 
creased electoral  expense  and  the  de- 
velopment of  a  corrupt  class  of  women 
politicians.  They  must  do  better  than 
this  to  demonstrate  to  the  non-suffrage 
states  a  reason  why  votes  should  be 
given  to  women. 

II 12 


ANALYSIS    OF   ONE    OF    THE 
SUFFRAGE  PLATFORMS 


XI 

ANALYSIS    OF    ONE    OF    THE 
SUFFRAGE  PLATFORMS 


T  ET  us  now  consider  in  detail  the 
■*^  platform  as  adopted  by  the  Wo- 
man Suffrage  Party  at  the  New  York 
City  Convention,  October  26,  191 1.  It 
states : 

I.  *The  claim  that  American  Gov- 
ernment is  a  government  of  the  people, 
by  the  people,  for  the  people,  is  a  pre- 
tense and  a  delusion  as  long  as  one-half 
of  the  people  are  deprived  of  all  voice 
in  that  government." 

Women  were  not  deprived  of  a  voice 
in  the  government ;  they  were  made  ex- 
empt from  its  responsibilities  in  view 
of  other  and  equally  important  services 
rendered  the  state  in  bearing  children 
and  making  homes. 

1x5 


Anti-Suffrage 

2.  *Tood,  clothing  and  shelter  are 
the  fundamental  necessities  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  they  are,  and  always  have  been 
the  primary  concern  of  women  in  the 
home.  We,  therefore,  denounce  a  po- 
litical system  which  robs  the  home  of 
adequate  representation  and  makes 
business  and  finance  the  chief  concern 
of  politics." 

As  business  and  finance  in  the  hands 
of  the  man  who  helps  to  make  a  home 
are  absolutely  necessary  to  its  continu- 
ance, it  might  reasonably  be  supposed 
that  when  the  man  who  brings  in  the 
money  that  pays  for  the  food  and  cloth- 
ing and  shelter,  votes  for  those  things 
which  he  thinks  will  enable  him  to  earn 
or  gain  money,  he  ^^adequately  repre- 
sents the  home." 

3.  ^We  protest  against  the  iniquity 
of  a  political  system  which  refuses  to 
grant  to  the  six  million  working  wo- 

116 


A  Suflfrage  Platform 

men*  engaged  in  industries  outside  the 
states  of  Colorado,  Utah,  Wyoming, 
Washington  and  Idaho  [California 
was  not  then  included],  a  share  in  the 
making  and  enforcing  of  the  laws 
which  control  every  matter  which  is 
vital  to  their  health  and  well-being." 

We  have  noted  before  that  there  are 
no  laws  regulating  night  work  for  wo- 
men in  Colorado,  Idaho,  Utah,  Wyo- 
ming. There  is  no  time  limit  for  wo- 
men's work  in  Idaho,  Utah,  Wyoming. 
Colorado  has  an  8-hour  day,  but  no 
week-hour  law,  and  the  8-hour  law  is 
for  ^^standing  occupations  only,"  of 
which  there  are  very  few,  while  the 
hours  of  women  engaged  in  seated  oc- 
cupations are  unrestricted.  Colorado 
prohibits  only  coal  mines  in  the  min- 
ing industry  to  women.  Seats  for  wo- 
men at  work  are  not  required  in  Idaho 

♦Various    estimates    of   women    in   industrial   life 
are  given,  from  one-seventh  to  one-fifth. 

117 


Anti-Suffrage 

nor  in  Wyoming;  in  Utah,  stores  only. 
Separate  toilets  are  not  required  for 
men  and  women  in  Idaho,  Utah,  Wyo- 
ming, Colorado,  California.  New- 
York  and  Massachusetts  lead  in  all 
legislation  favorable  to  working  wo- 
men— laws  made  by  men  to  protect 
women.  These  suffrage  states  have 
had  equal  franchise  for  a  sufficiently 
long  time  for  working  women  to  have 
received  all  needed  care  at  the  hands 
of  their  sister  women.  The  occupa- 
tions are  not  many,  the  conditions  not 
difficult.  Why  has  not  this  care  been 
given? 

4.  ^^Until  the  enfranchisement  of 
women  we  call  upon  all  women  to  op- 
pose the  idea  of  a  uniform  divorce 
law,  because  at  the  present  time  such  a 
law  would  be  made  by  men  only,  and 
would  necessarily  discriminate  against 
women.  We  declare  that  in  all  public 
conferences  and  commissions  appointed 
118 


A  Suffrage  Platform 

to  consider  this  subject  women  should 
have  an  equal  voice  with  men." 

Rev.  S.  W.  Dike,  of  Auburndale, 
Mass.,  who  for  many  years  has  worked 
faithfully  for  the  League  for  the  Pro- 
tection of  the  Family,  would  be  sur- 
prised to  find  that  his  wise  and  careful 
divorce  recommendations  must  ^^neces- 
sarily discriminate  against  women." 
He  has  worked  for  years  to  protect  the 
American  home,  for  which  all  Amer- 
ica owes  him  a  debt  of  gratitude.  A 
National  Divorce  Commission,  repre- 
senting all  of  the  states,  framed  in  1901 
a  uniform  divorce  law,  to  be  passed 
upon  by  the  legislatures  of  the  various 
states.  Causes  for  divorce  in  this  law 
are  adultery,  drunkenness  (alcohol  or 
drugs),  if  habitual,  extreme  cruelty, 
desertion  for  an  unspecified  period, 
non-support  and  conviction  for  felony. 
All  the  wrongs  suffered  by  women  can 
be  classified  under  these  heads,  except 
119 


Anti-Suffrage 

such  frivolous  reasons  for  breaking  up 
a  home  as  uncongeniality,  incompati- 
bility of  temper,  ^^mental  cruelty,"  etc. 
At  present  every  twelve  marriages 
bring  a  divorce;  people  who  are  mar- 
ried in  one  state  are  unmarried  in  an- 
other and  vice  versa,  owing  to  the  lax 
and  unequal  divorce  conditions  in  the 
different  states.  Suffragists  were  once 
urged  by  one  of  their  number  to  ask  for 
^'divorce  for  any  cause  whatever," 
thereby  making  that  important  state 
unit,  the  family,  a  thing  to  be  dashed  to 
pieces  at  the  behest  of  a  woman's  weari- 
ness, whim  or  unstable  affection.  This 
uniform  divorce  law,  so  ardently  de- 
sired by  those  having  the  good  of  the 
nation  at  heart,  has  been  accepted  by 
several  states,  but  has  encountered  op- 
position for  various  reasons,  one  of  the 
most  potent  being  the  determined  an- 
tagonism of  women  who  evidently  long 
1 20 


A  Suffrage  Platform 

ago  decided  to  follow  the  principle 
laid  down  in  this  platform. 

5.  **We  renew  our  condemnation  of 
the  suicidal  policy  of  permitting  child 
labor,  and  give  our  support  to  all  hu- 
manitarian legislation  looking  toward 
the  amelioration  of  race-destroying 
tendencies." 

When  Dr.  Bernbaum  of  Harvard 
asked  Mrs.  Florence  Kelley,  the  presi- 
dent of  the  Consumer's  League,  and  an 
ardent  suffragist,  ^Vhy  the  Colorado 
child  labor  laws  were  not  even  up  to 
those  of  Nebraska,"  she  replied,  "Col- 
orado laws  are  better  adapted  to  the 
needs  of  the  working  class  in  Colo- 
rado!" Dr.  Bernbaum  states  that  of 
the  ten  members  of  the  Executive  Com- 
mittee on  Child  Labor  in  Massachu- 
setts only  two  are  suffragists.  The  best 
of  child-labor  laws  were  secured  in 
Indiana  by  women  without  the  vote, 
and  in  many  states  in  the  Middle  West 
121 


Anti-Suffrage 

by  the  Federated  Women's  Clubs.  Col- 
orado laws  prohibit  children  working 
under  fourteen.  In  New  York  the  age 
is  sixteen.  The  enforcement  of  these 
laws  is  a  different  matter  from  their 
enactment.  Enforcement  depends  up- 
on the  number  of  inspectors  supplied. 
A  law  that  does  not  provide  for  inspec- 
tors is  everywhere  valueless  to  protect 
children.  New  York  and  Massachu- 
setts are  still  ahead  in  point  of  legisla- 
tion. 

6.  "In  face  of  the  revelations  of  the 
white  slave  traffic,  and  the  demonstrated 
connection  between  poverty  and  prosti- 
tution, we  declare  that  the  time  has 
come  for  a  complete  program  of  social 
legislation,  including  a  minimum  wage, 
shorter  hours,  steady  employment,  bet- 
ter housing  and  extensive  public  recre- 
ation." 

The  chapter  on  the  "Ballot  in  Indus- 
try" must  be  cited  to  answer  these  curi- 

122 


A  Suffrage  Platform 

ously  illogical  demands.  In  that 
chapter  we  have  spoken  of  the  mini- 
mum wage,  equal  pay  for  equal  work; 
the  question  of  seasonal  trades  was 
spoken  of  elsewhere.  It  is  New  York 
under  the  leadership  of  Jacob  Riis, 
that  has  led  the  way  on  the  Tenement 
House  problem;  it  is  Brooklyn  that  has 
an  investigation  commission  which  has 
done  away  with  thousands  of  dark 
rooms;  it  is  Washington,  D.C.,  a  city 
having  few  problems  despite  its  loo,- 
ooo  negro  population,  that  is  strug- 
gling with  the  question  of  the  alleys, 
and  the  alley  tenements  and  shacks, 
alleys  with  but  one  outlet,  where  the 
infant  mortality  is  double  that  on  the 
streets.  All  these  movements  are  led 
by  men  and  aided  by  women.  The 
Housing  Committee  of  the  Monday 
Evening  Club,  a  society  of  the  national 
capitol  with  no  ballot  power  what- 
ever, bids  fair  to  clean  up  the  city 
123 


Anti-Suffrage 

and  free  it  from  disease-breeding 
houses.  New  York  has  recreation 
piers;  all  large  and  many  small 
cities  have  parks  and  playgrounds, 
and  the  greater  number  of  these  play- 
grounds were  secured  by  disinterested 
women  without  the  ballot.  The  whole 
movement  of  the  public  conscience  is 
toward  better  and  more  general  recrea- 
tion conditions,  and  the  regulating  of 
improper  forms  of  recreation,  such  as 
unsupervised  dance  halls  and  moving 
picture  shows.  Women  are  not  the 
only  ones  who  desire  these  things. 
There  are  still  a  few  men  in  America 
who  are  awake  to  the  needs  of  the 
laboring  class.  Men,  tioo,  recognize 
that  the  time  has  come  for  a  "complete 
program  of  social  legislation,"  and  are 
everywhere  endeavoring  to  advance  it. 
Women,  asking  for  these  things  as  non- 
partisans, will  secure  a  more  ready 
hearing  and  a  quicker  response,  than  if 
124 


A  Suffrage  Platform 

they  appear  as  voters  to  be  suspected 
of  interested  motives. 

7.  ^^We  view  with  alarm  the  reac- 
tionary educational  movement  which 
would  restrict  the  education  of  women 
to  domestic  science,  and  ignore  their 
right  to  a  full  and  free  intellectual 
life." 

With  women's  colleges  dotting  our 
country  from  coast  to  coast,  it  can 
scarcely  be  said  that  the  right  of  women 
to  ^^fuU  and  free  intellectual  life"  is 
being  ignored.  Neither  do  the  courses 
in  domestic  science  given  in  colleges 
and  schools  restrict  women  in  any 
sense  whatever.  They  are  intended  to 
supplement  the  intellectual  knowledge 
in  a  land  which  is  declared  to  be  "the 
land  of  the  worst  middle  class  cooking 
in  the  world."  The  public  schools  are 
endeavoring  to  help.  It  is  a  disgrace 
to  American  women  that  our  children 
have  to  be  taught  cooking  in  a  public 
125 


Anti-Sufifrage 

school  because  so  many  mothers  can- 
not teach  it.  The  ^^paper-bag  home," 
filled  three  times  a  day  with  bakery 
trash,  menaces  every  factory  and  mill 
town.  Much  of  a  factory  worker's 
scanty  wages  is  spent  by  women  who 
cannot  cook,  and  who  waste  their  few 
cents  on  cheap  food  lacking  in  nourish- 
ment, supplied  by  the  hundreds  of  low 
grade  bakers  in  every  industrial  com- 
munity. The  delicatessen  store  men- 
aces the  middle  class  home,  where 
twice  the  value  is  spent  for  ready  cook- 
ed food;  and  the  caterer  is  a  great 
source  of  domestic  extravagance  among 
well-to-do  housekeepers.  Educational 
institutions  are  struggling  to  keep  the 
science  of  cookery  alive  among  Ameri- 
can women.  We  do  not  view  this  de- 
velopment ^Vith  alarm";  we  view  it 
with  relief.  It  is  an  endeavor  to  teach 
American  young  women  the  thing 
which  their  mothers  are  rapidly  for- 
126 


A  Suffrage  Platform 

getting — the  necessity  and  the  im- 
portance of  their  own  work.  All  that 
we  view  with  alarm  is  the  fact  that 
cooking  teachers  are  so  scarce. 

8.  ^'Wq  congratulate  the  teachers  of 
New  York  on  their  successful  struggle 
for  the  principle  of  equal  pay  for  equal 
work,  and  urge  the  extension  of  the 
principle  to  the  work  of  industrial  wo- 
men." 

It  is  not  equal  pay  for  equal  work 
that  is  asked,  but  equal  pay  for  different 
work.  See  the  earlier  chapter  before 
referred  to. 

9.  'We  repeat  our  plea  for  the  ap- 
pointment of  women  as  judges  and 
magistrates  in  the  courts  in  order  that 
the  interests  of  women  and  children 
may  be  better  safe-guarded."    ' 

Judge  Lindsay,  the  idol  of  the  suffra- 
gists, is  head  of  the  Juvenile  Court  of 
Denver;  there  are  juvenile  courts  pre- 
sided over  by  men  in  Boston,  Washing- 
127 


Anti-Suffrage 

ton  and  other  cities.  Judge  Lindsay 
claims  96  per  cent,  ^^cured,"  and  those 
who  have  seen  his  work  are  the  first  to 
admit  his  claim.  Others  claim  for 
their  own  work  about  50  per  cent, 
cured.  It  looks  as  if  men  were  doing 
fairly  well  in  safe-guarding  the  inter- 
ests of  children.  Women  are  not  so 
noticeable  for  their  fairness,  their  ju- 
dicial mind,  their  freedom  from  pre- 
judice and  partisan  bias  as  to  make  the 
general  application  of  the  demand  at 
all  desirable. 

10.  ^We  express  our  deepest  appre- 
ciation of  what  our  English  sisters 
have  done  for  the  woman's  movement 
the  world  over,  and  urge  our  own  wo- 
men to  exhibit  equal  self-sacrifice  and 
loyalty  as  occasion  may  arise." 

With  148  of  our  English  sisters  in 

jail  for  demolishing  property  at  this 

writing,  it  is  pertinent  to  enquire  ^^how 

much  lawlessness  does  it  take  to  make 

128 


A  Suffrage  Platform 

a  good  law-maker?"  The  spectacular 
rioting,  the  window-breaking  and 
stone-throwing,  the  much-sought  im- 
molation in  prison,  the  present  threats 
of  recourse  to  firearms,  the  personal  as- 
saults upon  public  men,  urged  with 
greater  violence  while  the  coal  strike 
was  impending,  are  not  examples  for 
American  women  to  emulate,  and  if 
they  do  adopt  such  ridiculous  tactics, 
they  should  be  dealt  with  exactly  as 
men  rioters  are  dealt  with.  A  govern- 
ment which  would  allow  itself  to  be 
coerced  into  the  granting  of  any  politi- 
cal boon  because  a  few  women  were 
lawless,  would  make  itself  the  laughing- 
stock of  the  world,  and  would  not  be 
safe  for  an  hour  from  the  frenzied  and 
impossible  demands  of  its  own  subjects. 
The  world  in  general  is  not  attracted 
nor  impressed  by  such  half-civilized 
conduct,  nor  is  it  disposed  to  trust 
weighty  matters  of  state  to  frenzied  and 
129 


Anti-Suflfrage 

hysterical  women,  unthinking,  illogi- 
cal, carried  along  by  an  excited  mob 
of  lunatics.  It  represents  a  pathologi- 
cal rather  than  a  penological  condition. 
The  enunciation  of  this  plank  in  the 
platform  will  inevitably  cause  intelli- 
gent American  women  to  repudiate  it. 

II.  ^^We  call  upon  New  York  to  fol- 
low the  example  of  Wisconsin,  Kansas 
and  the  other  states  where  a  referendum 
has  been  submitted  to  the  people  on  the 
question  of  equal  suffrage." 

When  this  was  tried  in  Massachu- 
setts in  1895,  the  result  gave  4  per  cent, 
of  the  voters  in  favor  of  suffrage.  Dr. 
Lyman  Abbott  and  Col.  Roosevelt, 
approaching  this  question  from  very 
different  standpoints,  advocate  the 
referendum  on  this  matter.  The  anti- 
suffrage  women  cordially  welcome 
the  idea,  and  wish  it  tried  not  only 
in  New  York,  but  in  other  states 
as  well.  Under  these  circumstances 
130 


A  Suffrage  Platform 

only  in  the  most  feeble  and  sparse- 
ly settled  Western  states,  or  in  a  state 
gone  mad  with  socialistic  teaching, 
would  the  suffragists  find  a  ray  of 
hope. 


131 


CONCLUSION 


CONCLUSION 


npHE  anti-suffragists  stand  very 
strongly  for  the  position  that  wo- 
men do  not  need  the  ballot  to  accom- 
plish their  ends.  If  they  are  really  in 
earnest  they  can  secure  whatever  they 
are  willing  to  work  for  in  the  way  of 
beneficent  or  remedial  legislation.  In- 
telligent and  interested  women  will 
have  by  far  the  larger  share  in  this  indi- 
rect government;  all  the  objectionable 
classes  will  be  eliminated,  and  the  wo- 
men who  are  actuated  by  high  motives 
will  remain.  Appearing  before  legisla- 
tures and  committees,  they  will  be 
known  as  non-partisan,  known  only  as 
women  with  ^^no  political  axes  to  grind, 
no  political  trades  to  make,"  women 
whose  animating  purposes  are  above 

135 


Anti-Suffrage 

suspicion.  As  such  they  will  be  given 
careful  attention,  the  attention  which 
they  have  often  received  from  political 
bodies  of  men.  The  men  recognize  a 
disinterested  effort  toward  the  good  and 
wise  thing,  whereas  if  women  appear 
before  them  holding  as  much  power  as 
they  do,  the  question  will  arise,  or  may 
arise,  ^Vhat  is  behind?  How  will  it 
affect  this  or  that  party?",  exactly  as  it 
arises  among  men. 

Patriotism  for  a  woman  does  not  be- 
gin at  the  ballot  box.  It  begins  when 
she  takes  pains  to  instruct  her  young 
son  concerning  the  dignity  and  sacred- 
ness  of  the  ballot.  Our  fathers  used  to 
believe  in  this,  and  our  country  grew 
great  when  this  doctrine  was  impressed 
upon  its  young  men.  Of  late  years,  this 
having  been  taken  too  much  for  grant- 
ed, we  have  seen  a  strange  corruption 
of  the  electorate.  In  every  community 
votes  are  bought  and  sold  with  little 
136 


Conclusion 

thought  of  shame,  little  realization  of 
the  baseness  and  treachery  involved. 
Sometimes  an  effort  is  made  to  cover 
the  bald  infamy  of  it,  as  in  a  New  Eng- 
land rural  community,  where  a  con- 
versation has  been  known  to  run  some- 
thing like  this: 

^^Did  you  get  $2  for  voting  for  Mr. 
So-and-so?" 
^^No,  I  didn't." 

^^Then  why  did  you  vote  for  him?" 
'^Because  I  like  him." 
**And  why  do  you  like  him?" 
^^Because  he  gave  me  two  dollars." 
The  lack  of  appreciation  of  simple 
honesty  and  honor  goes  back  to  home 
training,  back  to  those  women  who  by  | 
training  the  voters  will  eventually  hold  " 
more  power  than  if  voting  themselves. 
The  best  and  highest  patriotism  con- 
sists in  doing  our  own  work  of  teaching. 
Women    are    the    world's    educators; 
men  the  world's  exponents.    We  have 

137 


Anti-Suffrage 

educated  amiss  if  we  have  raised  up  a 
generation  of  men  who  can  be  so  little 
trusted  that  now  we  must  sweep  them 
aside  and  take  the  reins  in  our  own 
hands. 

If  we  are  given  the  franchise  this 
country  will  present  the  spectacle  of 
women  possessed  of  ^^rights  in  excess  of 
power,"  and  a  preponderance  of  wo- 
men voters  would  give,  as  Prof.  A.  V. 
Dicey  of  England  points  out,  ^^sover- 
eignty without  force,"  a  governmental 
anomaly.  He  shows  the  basic  relation 
between  force  and  sovereignty,  sover- 
eignty meaning  dominant  power,  and 
force  that  physical  possession  without 
which  sovereignty  can  never  be  effect- 
ive. AH  law  is  based  upon  the  supposi- 
tion that  back  of  its  edicts  lies  the  force 
that  can  be  summoned  to  make  those 
edicts  imperative,  whether  or  no.  In  the 
very  nature  of  the  case,  if  women  claim 
sovereignty  they  must  call  upon  men 

138 


Conclusion 

for  the  force — a  humiliating  state  of 
affairs.  This  is  the  absurd  position  at 
which  we  arrive  if  we  follow  the  relent- 
less logic  of  the  initial  proposition,  as 
offered  by  the  suffrage  party. 

The  methods  used  by  many  of  the 
suffragists  to  attain  their  end  are  of 
such  a  nature  that  plain  common  sense, 
educated  or  uneducated,  refuses  to 
sanction  them.  The  militant  methods 
require  no  comment.  The  pacific  me- 
thods are  also  very  objectionable,  for 
no  sensible  person  can  be  won  to  a 
cause  whose  devotees  display  such  ig- 
norance of  the  laws  and  existing  condi- 
tions as  are  shown  in  the  street  cam- 
paigns and  speeches.  The  speakers 
usually  remind  their  hearers  with  great 
force  of  Artemus  Ward's  friend,  ^Vho 
knew  so  many  things  that  were  not  so." 

When  Mrs.  Pankhurst,  on  a  New 
York  street  corner,  held  out  a  list  of 
deserted  wives,  secured  from  the  office 

139 


Anti-Suffrage 

of  the  Associated  Charities,  and  in- 
formed her  audience  that  if  women  had 
the  ballot  such  things  could  not  be,  she 
proved  herself  quite  ignorant  of  the 
very  stringent  laws  existing  in  New 
York  for  the  punishment  of  men  who 
abandon  their  families.  The  proper 
law,  the  best  possible  law  has  been  en- 
acted. Enforcement  of  any  law  is  a 
far  different  matter. 

The  most  recent  method  which  has 
been  used  is  the  ^^philanthropy  boy- 
cott," known  as  ^^the  pledge  of  will  and 
won't." 

^^I  hereby  promise  that  I  WILL  give 
what  I  can  and  do  my  share  of  work  to 
gain  votes  for  women." 

*^I  will  NOT  give  either  money  or 
services  to  any  other  cause  until  the 
women  of  New  York  State  have  been 
enfranchised." 

In  New  York  State  one  suffragist 
spent  $36,890.00  between  October,  1909, 
140 


Conclusion 

and  March,  1910;  another  $37,750.00 
in  the  same  time.  The  fund  in  England 
was  found  to  be  a  half  million  dollars, 
with  $20,000.00  spent  for  the  hire  of 
halls  alone.  Charity  reports  in  Eng- 
land and  America,  in  this  past  year, 
have  shown  the  loss  of  contributions 
and  the  loss  of  names  of  well  known 
and  hitherto  generous  women. 

This  pledge  is  an  English  importa- 
tion, and  exhibits  no  conscience  or  feel- 
ing for  the  many  afflicted  and  helpless, 
now  being  aided  by  voluntary  subscrip- 
tions to  charity,  who  will  be  made  to 
suffer  by  the  curtailing  of  funds  relied 
upon  for  their  support,  in  order  that 
they  may  be  made  pitiful  factors  in  the 
fight  In  effect  these  suffragists  say,  "we 
will  make  the  helpless  suffer,  and  see  if 
the  sight  of  their  suffering  will  compel 
you  to  let  us  have  our  own  way."  Such 
a  spirit  cannot  commend  itself,  nor 
make  these  women  worthy  of  the  very 
141 


Anti-Suffrage 

thing  they  seek.  It  proves  that  their 
methods  of  warfare  will  be  the  same 
later  as  they  are  now,  childishly  law- 
less where  militant,  ignorant  or  cruel 
where  pacific. 

The  arguments  all  lead  back  along 
a  circular  trail.  In  this  forest  of  ques- 
tions and  statistics  and  opinions,  we 
return  to  the  point  from  which  we  start- 
ed out.  We  of  the  majority  insist  that 
universal  adult  suffrage  will  be  a  men- 
ace to  American  government  and  to 
American  womanhood,  and  that  it  is 
lacking  in  the  fundamental  principle 
of  patriotism. 


NOTE 

As  the  number  given  on  page  53  (80,000)  is  the 
number  connected  with  the  National  Association, 
and  as  there  is  no  way  of  estimating  those  not  so 
connected,  other  organizations  are  doubtless  in- 
cluded in  the  3,000,000  figure  mentioned  as  inter- 
ested in  suffrage  for  women. 

G.  D.  G. 


i 


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